


It's Dark and There Are Wolves

by Lissadiane



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Light Dom/sub, M/M, Werewolf AU, bucky tries to be a good alpha, but he tries to be good, clint is a stupid wolf, clint's not great at taking orders though, people get eaten, that's gotta count for something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-13 07:09:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 41,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18463993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lissadiane/pseuds/Lissadiane
Summary: It’s dark and there are wolves howling and the only thing standing between Clint and death by wild beast is the hand he’s got clutching his stomach where his guts are threatening to make an unwelcome appearance.He really shoulda asked for more details when Natasha called him up and asked him to help Captain America search the Russian countryside for his long lost best friend who'd just tried to kill him in D.C.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is filled with more blood and sweat and tears than anything I've ever written and would not have ever been finished without the generous and amazing help of a whole bunch of people. So many people. [Skoosie](https://pantstomatch.tumblr.com/), without whom, as usual, nothing would be possible or written (and who says this fic is all sex and kinky sex at that but that is a scandalous lie, there is plot too). [Nny](https://Villainny.tumblr.com/), [kangofu_cb](https://kangofu_cb.tumblr.com/), and [angrydollface](https://angrydollface.tumblr.com/), for reading, cheerleading, cleaning up dick logistics, etc., and [awheckery](https://awheckery.tumblr.com/) for happily providing me with hours of research into all the ways wolves can get up to kinky (or fun) shit whenever I had writers block. The entire Bad Decisions Buddy discord helped too. Thank you!
> 
> It's three chapters and I'll probably post them all over the next three days, because I have no self-restraint.

Chapter One

It’s dark and there are wolves howling and the only thing standing between Clint and death by wild beast is the hand he’s got clutching his stomach where his guts are threatening to make an unwelcome appearance.

It’s not exactly the way he thought he was going to die. It’s an interesting way to go, sure. Nat would probably get a kick out of it. But Clint would rather survive if it’s all the same, and he squints up at the tree he’s leaning against, trying to decide if he can climb it without letting go of the frankly alarming wound on his stomach.

He sees the glint of animal eyes in the thicker shadows nearby, and says to the wolf, “The only good thing about this is that the Hydra assholes who shot me don’t get the satisfaction of being the ones who actually caused my untimely death. And like. At least I’ll be doing one last good thing for the world -- feeding some animals who look like they haven’t had a good meal in a while -- before I die. Well. Hopefully after I die. Oh christ, don’t eat me alive, okay?”

The giant, hulking wolf -- probably the alpha of the pack that’s been stalking him -- comes closer and Clint makes a heroic attempt to jump for the lowest branch on the tree. He grabs it just as the wolf rushes at him, and he gets himself halfway up and out of their reach when his hand -- slick with his own blood -- slips.

And he falls.

“Aww, shit,” he mumbles, and then there’s a ferocious growl, a snap of teeth, and everything goes black.

*

He wakes up. He honest to god didn’t expect to.

“What the fuck,” he mumbles, flinching away from the sunlight hitting his face and batting at whatever it is that’s got him pinned down. He’s been bound -- someone’s caught him -- aww fuck, Hydra’s probably caught him and they’ve tied him down and they’re probably going to torture him and --

He manages to open his eyes just as he’s gearing up to really fight and sees that he’s not been tied down at all. He’s wrapped in a blanket -- a heavy, hand-stitched, faded quit that has clearly been well loved if the careful patchwork is any indication.

It’s much homier than he expected. To be fair, he had expected to be dead and eaten by wolves. But this -- a loft bedroom with a sloped wooden ceiling, a gable window, a big, soft bed loaded up with quilts, and the smell of something cooking wafting up from the main floor of what seems to be a cozy log cabin?

Definitely a step up from death by wolves.

He sits up and kicks the quilt off and wishes he could hear something -- anything -- but his hearing aids don’t seem to have survived the wolf attack.

And then Clint goes very still. Sure, his memory is a little hazy and he’s not sure how he ended up in this Goldilocks and the Three Bears sort of cottage and he basically can’t hear anything even if there was anything to hear. But he’s pretty damned sure he has not been here long enough to heal the brutal gunshot wound to his gut.

And yet, he’s not feeling any pain.

He yanks up the t-shirt he’s wearing -- standard issue white and definitely not his, what the fuck -- and gapes at his clean, unblemished, unscarred, and still ridiculously muscular stomach.

“Maybe I’m dead,” he mumbles, looking around more critically. Is this his idea of heaven? 

There’s a distinct lack of pizza.

It’s much more likely that this is a fever dream, though, rather than the hell of running from an angry battalion of Hydra operatives through a fucking Russian forest, with a gunshot wound to the gut, only to be stalked by motherfucking wolves --

Okay, it’s possible that was a fever dream too. If he didn’t have such visceral, blinding memories of how much that fucking hurt, he’d think it had just been a nightmare.

Clint makes his way carefully down the wooden steps leading from the loft to the rest of the little cottage, which consists of a little living room with a cozy couch and a tiny TV, a few bookshelves crammed with all manner of reading material and strange collections of pinecones and river stones, a tiny nook with a rickety-looking table, and a kitchen that looks straight from the 1970s, which a wood stove.

There is a bowl of steaming soup and a spoon on the table, like someone left it out just for him, and Clint looks around again, but no one else is there. It’s just an adorable, idyllic log cabin. And he is alone with a miraculously healed gunshot wound. And there are no wolves in sight.

“What the fuck,” he says, and then louder, in case anybody’s listening. Just because he can’t hear doesn’t mean whoever the fuck is responsible for this fuckery isn’t listening.

He eats the soup. Sure, he’s pissed, but he’s not stupid.

*

Clint does his best, but he can’t find a landline phone -- or a cell phone, for that matter. He also can’t find a spare pair of shoes and can’t see himself dashing off into the woods in his bare feet. It’s fall, but it’s still too damned cold for bare feet.

If he’s stuck here -- and it’s starting to seem like he might be -- Clint decides his best course of action is to take an inventory of his supplies and stockpile anything that might make a good weapon. He’s damned sure he didn’t make it to this cottage on his own.

He finds a pantry filled with non-perishables, a little fridge filled with beer, a set of snow shoes he considers using to escape for all of three minutes, and a nice, hefty brick that might make a good weapon.

And then, just as the sun starts setting, something snaps in his ears and his balance goes drastically off-kilter. His knees give out and he falls, and just as his hands and knees hit the floor, his brain just about splits open from the high-pitched, brutally loud ringing that he can all of a sudden hear -- despite the fact that he’s been practically deaf for years.

It almost sounds like his old aids -- before Tony built him state of the art ones that never fucked up but apparently couldn’t survive Hydra and a wolf attack -- when something would go wrong and they’d get a shrill burst of feedback.

He’s not wearing aids, though.

It’s too loud and too sharp to think it through, to figure out where it’s coming from and why he can hear it at all, and Clint just claps both hands to his ears and squeezes his eyes shut and pants and begs for it to stop.

And then, an indeterminate amount of time later, it just. Stops.

He keeps his eyes shut for a long moment, and then realizes that there is a motherfucking cricket somewhere in this cottage.

And he can hear it.

And he can hear the wind blowing against the eaves. And he can hear the fire crackling in the wood stove. And he can hear his own goddamned breathing, raspy and panicky and loud.

He can hear.

“What the fuck,” he whispers, and then he flinches because his voice is loud and strange when not filtered through his hearing aids.

And then he hears soft, careful footsteps coming closer.

He scrambles for his brick and takes the stairs to the loft two at a time.

The door opens and closes again and Clint hears it. He flinches, tightens his grip on the brick, and breathes. 

Someone is downstairs and they aren’t doing much to hide it, walking around like they own the place -- they probably do. Clint hears them take off their boots by the door, the brush of fabric as they toss their coat over a chair, the clatter as they gather up his empty soup bowl because Clint wasn’t gonna fucking clean his own damned dishes when his host couldn’t even bother to stick around and, okay, it’s possible that Clint was just too lazy to do it.

And then the TV comes on and the springs on the old sofa creak and Jeopardy is on and what the actual fuck is happening.

He creeps over to the edge of the loft and peers down over the loft, but the loft is directly over top of the living room, so he can’t see anything anyway.

A beer cracks open.

“You want one?”

Clint drops his brick and it clatters noisily down the stairs and he can fucking hear that too.

“A… beer?” he asks, uncertain.

“Got some Coke too, if you prefer.”

Clint weighs his options, but the truth is, maybe he’s reading this wrong. Maybe he hasn’t been captured by some strange Hydra offshoot with a cozy cabin in the woods who are feeding him frankly delicious soup and offering him beer. Maybe he isn’t a captive here.

“I could use a beer,” he says.

He makes it to the bottom of the stairs, turns to face the little living room and take the beer that’s already set out for him, and freezes.

“Aww, shit,” he says, and then Clint turns and bolts for the door.

His captor, apparently, is the motherfucking Winter Soldier.

He doesn’t make it to the door before he’s tackled from behind and pinned face down to the floor.

*

Russian beer, for the record, tastes like shit.

Clint takes a swallow anyway. It’s something to do with his hands, with his mouth, something to distract him from remembering the strange, animalistic panic that had overtaken him when the Winter Soldier -- when Bucky -- had tackled him and pinned him down.

It’s something that helps distract him from remembering the way he’d snarled, twisted, scratched at the floor, and the way Bucky had cursed, low and rough, before… before sinking his teeth into the place where Clint’s neck joined with his shoulder.

He hadn’t broken skin. He’d just… put pressure there. And instantly, that feral panic had just… eased. And he’d gone limp. Like a stringless puppet.

He takes another swig of beer and steadily avoids looking at the place where he had apparently left long, ragged scratches in the hardwood floor. With his fingers. He licks at his teeth because for a moment back there, they had felt just a little too sharp.

Nope. Not thinking about that.

On the TV, Alex Trebeck is teeing up for Final Jeopardy.

It’s a pretty good way to keep himself from screaming or asking a billion questions or touching the spot on his neck that’s still tingling in a frankly uncomfortable and somewhat arousing sort of way.

And then he runs out of beer.

“What the fuck,” he says, now that his mouth isn’t occupied. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fucking fuck was that?”

Bucky’s face remains blank as he sets his beer aside and turns his head to study Clint for a moment. “You can’t leave,” he says, and it’s almost apologetic, except that it’s lacking nearly any emotional inflection at all.

“You can’t keep me here,” Clint tells him, and Bucky just lifts a skeptical eyebrow and doesn’t say anything. “I mean, you can try all you want, but my team is going to find me.”

Bucky doesn’t react.

“My team -- you know, The Avengers? Natasha and Tony and Steve and--”

Finally, a reaction, if only a slight flinch at Steve’s name. Clint’ll take any advantage he can get.

“Steve, that’s right, you know him. I saw what you did in D.C., you know him. Captain America. He’s gonna notice when I don’t report in, you wanna know why, because he’s the reason I’m over in this fucking hell, because he sent me here looking for you.”

Bucky growls, low in his throat, and then throws a phone at Clint and it lands perfectly in his lap. It’s a cheap one, a burner phone.

“Then you need to call them,” he says. “And tell them not to come for you.”

Clint looks around, exaggerated movements, before saying, “Gee, Bucky, not that your hospitality hasn’t been stellar, but why the fuck would I want to stay here with you?”

Bucky ignores his sarcasm and says, “If they come here, they’ll get hurt. If you want to keep them safe, tell them to stay away.”

“Maybe you held your own against Cap, but he was emotionally compromised,” Clint says. “The whole team shows up and you don’t have a chance. They’ll take you down. You won’t have a chance to hurt them.”

Bucky finally turns to look at him, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “It’s not me who’ll hurt them,” he says, quiet. “It’s you.”

Clint opens his mouth to snarl something in reply, but then he shoots a quick glance at the marks he left on the floor, flicks his tongue over his teeth to make sure they still feel blunt and human. He remembers how easy it was to fall into the ice blue of Loki’s magic, how easy it was to hurt them then.

It’s quiet -- he can hear the crickets chirping outside, the wind running through the eaves, the theme music of whatever show Bucky’s watching now.

It’s suffocating in a way he doesn’t want to think about, because even Tony’s best hearing aids hadn’t given him this much depth, this many layers, to his hearing.

A twig snaps somewhere outside, and Clint jerks his head around to stare out the window, going tense, even though it sounds far off and is just one tiny sound among many tiny sounds he has been very carefully not paying attention to.

“Relax,” Bucky says, cracking open another beer and handing it to him. He takes the burner phone back, tucking it away quietly. “It’s a rabbit.”

Clint relaxes. It’s like his body obeys Bucky’s commands without even a conscious thought.

He doesn’t think about that, either.

*

Clint doesn’t sleep. Bucky gives him the bed, and Clint knows it’s because it’ll be easier to keep him from sneaking out in the middle of the night if Clint’s got the stairs to sneak down before he even makes a break for the door, but the bed is wasted on him. All Clint does is stare, wide-eyed, at the ceiling that he can see in far too much detail, and listen to every sound of the forest closing in around him.

He can hear soft footsteps of rabbits, foxes, wolves and mice. He can hear owls hooting and hawks crying and crickets chirping. He can hear leaves and grass moving in the wind. He can hear Bucky’s soft, even breathing below him.

He still doesn’t know why he can hear anything at all.

In the morning, Clint is paranoid, twitchy, and grumpy, and to make things worse, apparently Bucky doesn’t have any coffee.

“I’d go get some from town,” Bucky says. “But you’d try to leave.”

“Tie me up. Knock me out. I don’t care, just get me coffee.”

Bucky squints at him suspiciously and then he says, “I do need to get some gas for the generator. I guess I could pick some up.”

“Yes. Definitely. That is the best idea.”

Clint firmly believes that coffee is worth any sacrifice -- that is, until Bucky pulls out a duffle bag with far too many sets of iron cuffs and chains for any sane person to really keep under the bed, just in case they might ever come in handy.

Sure, he’s the Winter Soldier. But not even Natasha keeps this level of high-grade restraints under her bed.

But coffee is necessary for life, and Clint did tell Bucky he could tie him up, so he holds his wrists out with only a slight hesitation, watching as Bucky threads the chains through a ring attached to the ceiling. 

Once he’s adequately restrained, Bucky says, “I won’t be long.” He sounds a little apologetic. “And then after, we should probably…” He looks deeply, deeply uncomfortable. “Talk. About things.”

Things like the scratches on the floor and Clint’s super hearing and Bucky’s teeth pressing into his neck? “Nope,” Clint says. “I’m good with the no talking. Just get me coffee and I’ll finish up my daring escape plans and we never need to talk about this at all.”

Bucky huffs and then asks, “Are you ready to call your friends and tell them to stop looking for you yet?”

“Nope,” he says with a sunny smile.

Bucky sighs and doesn’t bother locking the door when he leaves.

After he’s gone, Clint spends about twenty minutes trying to dislocate his thumb to slide his hands out of the metal cuffs, but eventually gives up and flops on the sofa, which Bucky had thoughtfully shoved within reach of the chains. He’d even left the little TV on.

He falls asleep.

*

When he wakes up, his wrists are no longer in cuffs, and the cottage is filled with the delicious, delicious scent of freshly brewed coffee.

Bucky is standing at the stove, flipping pancakes, and Clint just lays there for a moment, uncomfortable with the idea that he slept through Bucky getting back, unpacking whatever shit he picked up, unlocking Clint’s cuffs, and whipping up a hearty breakfast.

Clint doesn’t _sleep_ around others, except for Natasha, and only under duress. Sure, he might fall asleep in the lounge at the tower, but only if he’s alone, and he always jerks awake the second someone else comes into the room. He shouldn’t -- definitely shouldn’t -- trust Bucky enough to sleep through having him get close enough to unlock a pair of cuffs without even stirring.

But in his defense, Clint was really, really tired, and he hadn’t had any coffee yet, so.

He’s laying on his back on the couch and he arches his back a little and watches Bucky upside down, doing his best to flash some puppy dog eyes that even Natasha has proven unable to resist, a time or two.

“Coffee?” he says hopefully.

Bucky’s lips quirk like he’s hiding a smile and keeps his gaze fixed on the pancake he’s waiting to flip. “Beside you.”

Clint turns his head and, true to his word, Bucky had left a giant, steaming mug of coffee on the table beside the sofa. He moans, rolling onto his side and reaching out with grabby hands, snatching it up. It’s still hot -- too hot -- but he downs the mug and looks at Bucky hopefully, but Bucky just jerks his head at the coffee machine on the counter and keeps flipping pancakes.

Luckily, Clint’s much more capable of functioning after one mug, so he gets up, scratching idly at his stomach, and wanders over to get a refill.

“So,” he says as he does. “Town. Where you got this coffee. Where is that? How far? Which direction? Where’d you keep your car?”

Bucky snorts and says, “Not too far, southwest, and I don’t have one. And you can’t leave so forget about it.”

“Not that I’m not enjoying your hospitality,” Clint tells him, raising his mug in silent salute. “Though it’s confusing as fuck. We’ve been looking for you for two years, where’ve you been?”

“Here,” Bucky says, turning with a plate piled high with pancakes and putting it on the table, which he’s already set. He jerks his chin at the other chair and Clint sits, watching, amused, as Bucky pours them both giant glasses of orange juice and adds a platter of bacon and toast to the spread.

“This is so fucking domestic,” Clint says, grinning. “The Winter Soldier, playing house in a little cottage in the Russian forest.”

“Not the Winter Soldier anymore,” Bucky tells him, staring down at his pancake with a fixed glare.

But Clint is wholly willing to focus on Bucky if it means not focusing on himself, so he says, “So who are you then? Bucky Barnes? I’m Clint -- I don’t know if I told you that. Just in case you thought I was Hydra and that’s why you’re keeping me prisoner. I was a little startled when I first woke up, given the fact that I woke up at all and wasn’t dead and eaten by wolves, and might’ve forgotten to introduce myself.”

“I know who you are,” Bucky says. “If I thought you were Hydra, I’d have let you die.” He considers for a moment. “Or killed you myself.”

“After loads of torture and interrogation, I know. You’re kinda famous for it.”

Bucky finally lifts his head, glaring. “I told you. I’m not the Winter Soldier anymore.”

Clint takes a few pancakes, smothers them with syrup, and says, “Okay, then. Enlighten me. If you’ve broken your conditioning and aren’t brainwashed anymore, why are you playing house in this admittedly adorable cottage -- there are doilies on the goddamned tables, Barnes -- instead of going home to Brooklyn. And to Steve.”

“I don’t -- I’m not Steve’s Bucky anymore. So why would I go back?”

“Because it’s better than living alone in a fairytale cottage, miserable, with no one to make pancakes for? Besides. This forest is full of wolves. They almost ate me. And you don’t even have a vehicle -- how did you get to town and back? With groceries?”

Bucky smirks, just a little, and says, “I ran, Barton.”

“Huh.” 

He chews for a while, because he’s starving and these are pretty much the best pancakes he’s ever had, and thinks it over.

“So here’s the thing I can’t figure out, though. I was here, checking out a Hydra compound, looking for, ironically, you. Natasha and Steve were checking out other reportedly abandoned compounds -- which this one was supposed to be as well, for the record. I found my compound occupied, got shot in my escape attempt, ran into the woods, got chased by wolves, fell out of a tree, and somehow, ran into you.”

“Is there supposed to be a question in all that?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah. If you aren’t the brainwashed super assassin Winter Soldier anymore, if you’re not with Hydra anymore, why the fuck are you hiding out in their backyard?”

Bucky’s smile, this time, was slow and a little blood-thirsty. “Because on the full moons, it gives me something to hunt.”

Clint blinks. He shoots a quick, startled look at the scratches his fingers somehow left on the floor, and swallows hard. He thinks about the wolves, the howling, the flashes of red eyes just before he tumbled from that tree. He doesn’t want to think about hunting anything on the full moon.

So he lets silence fall and he ducks his head and he eats his pancakes and ignores every time he feels Bucky look at him.

*

Jeopardy is on again.

“The full moon is in three days,” Bucky announces, casual.

“Cool,” Clint says. “I’m probably not going to be here. Got places to be, you know how it is.”

Bucky turns to him and says, “I’m gonna need you to call your friends and tell them to stop looking for you.”

The truth is, Clint is going a little stir crazy. It’s been a long day and the cottage is nice, but it’s also weird as fuck to be playing some strange version of domesticity with the Winter Soldier, for all that he seems more of a Calm, Pleasant Day Soldier instead of a Winter Soldier.

He’s got to get out of here. He’ll take his chances with the wolves, with Hydra, with whatever -- he’s got to get to Natasha and then he’s got to call Steve and tell him that he found his long lost best friend and they can stop spending all their time searching abandoned (and not so abandoned) Hydra compounds for information. 

And then -- and then he can go back to his retirement and his farm and his quiet life, unplagued by the guilt of knowing that Captain America needed his help tracking down his long lost best friend.

He takes a breath and lets it out and says, “What is Delaware?” to the question that’s not asking anything about Delaware at all, but who the fuck cares.

Bucky huffs. “You can’t keep denying --”

“You are entirely underestimating my abilities when it comes to denial,” Clint tells him.

Bucky lets it go.

*

It’s dark and, once again, Clint can’t sleep. The wind has picked up and it sounds like packs of wolves howling in the eaves, rattling the branches outside, carrying with it strange sounds that Clint, with his newfound hearing, can’t identify.

He thinks Bucky is sleeping below. It’s past midnight, and anybody with any sense of self preservation would be sleeping. But Clint has never been known for self preservation, and he’s also never been known to sit idly by when he’s been kidnapped, even by as polite a kidnapper as Bucky has turned out to be.

He waits until the wind picks up even more, hoping it’ll disguise the sound of his bare feet sliding onto the floor. But just in case, he picks up the brick he’d stashed under the bed when he’d first woken up.

He tiptoes down the stairs, listening with his newfound hearing, and watching for any crack, any obstacle in his way, with eyes that can somehow see better in the dark than he’s ever been able to see before.

He doesn’t think about it.

And he even gets halfway across the floor before Bucky, stepping out of the shadows without a sound, grabs him by the shoulder.

“Barton,” he says, sounding tired. “You can’t --”

It’s instinct and panic and it gives Clint an extra burst of adrenaline and strength as he spins around, lifting his hand and slamming the brick into the side of Bucky’s head.

It’s hard enough and Clint’s hearing is strong enough that he hears something break with a sick snap, and Bucky hits the ground hard.

He doesn’t move and neither does Clint, because the scent of Bucky’s blood is so thick and overpowering and a strange sense of vertigo overcomes him, a whine catching in the back of his throat. He’s filled with a feeling of disbelief and fear, as if he shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have hurt Bucky, and it feels deeper and more instinctive than simple regret.

But he has to go.

He tries to shove his feet into Bucky’s shoes, but they’re too small, and with a quiet, nervous curse, he decides that bare feet will have to do. He grabs Bucky’s warm, ragged plaid coat on his way out the door.

He heads southwest, hoping Bucky hadn’t lied about which way the village was. And if he’d managed to run there and back in a day, it couldn’t be too far, could it?

Above him, the nearly full moon shines brightly through the tree branches, and he gratefully decides that must be why the night doesn’t seem as dark as it should, why he finds it so easy to pick his way through the woods.

There’s an itchy, anxious feeling between his shoulder blades that seems somehow related to the light of the moon, a need to throw his head back and shout -- or howl, a need to run, to dig his feet into the soil, to chase after the sounds he can hear in the thickets, the fast beating of tiny hearts that just seem to scream prey into the night.

Instead, he hunches his shoulders and moves more quickly through the trees, trying to put as much distance between himself and Bucky as he can.

And then, some time later, he smells something dark, something that tastes like oil and gun powder in the back of his throat, and hears human voices filtering through the trees.

There should not be people out here and he freezes, listening.

Voices, again, bitching about the dark and the cold and their superiors, for assigning them such a stupid patrol, so deep in the woods, so far from base.

A Hydra patrol? 

Clint looks around desperately for a place to hide or a weapon, wishing he hadn’t dropped his bloodied brick back at the cottage. There is a narrow thicket a few steps away that’ll probably hide him unless the Hydra goons have night vision.

He takes a careful step, but he’s distracted and nervous and his bare foot knocks a stone loose, causing the faintest skittering of stone against stone.

“Did you hear that?” one Hydra operative asks another, and their flashlights sway wildly, cutting through the darkness towards Clint.

He’s been struggling against a strange, animalistic anxiety since striking Bucky with that brick and now, faced with the prospect of being caught by Hydra without a weapon or back up, that anxiety blossoms into an overwhelming, sharp panic.

He runs, crashing heedlessly through the forest, snapping branches as he goes, and Hydra gives chase.

He’s barefoot and lost in a desperate need to get away, an all-encompassing panic as he remembers fleeing that other night, bleeding and dying and chased by wolves. There is no strategy to his flight, and they catch up quickly.

The first few gunshots go wide, striking trees on either side of him, but it’s only a matter of time before one clips him, a searing line of fire along his thigh.

It’s enough to send him tumbling wildly to the ground, catching himself on his hands and his knees, desperate to breathe through the pain.

And then he realizes that he’s breathing after all, and every breath is coming out in a growl.

That anxiety, that itchiness, that moonlight, it all washes over him, mixed with the panic, and it becomes a feral sort of rage.

These humans will not touch him again. They will not hurt him. They will not make him bleed.

They won’t get the chance.

It’s the last thing Clint is aware of for a while. The rest is a blur of instinct, of animalistic reaction, of snapping teeth and claws and screams, shrill and broken and begging for a mercy that an animal does not know to give. It’s a blur of taste -- of torn fabric and flesh and blood burning in the back of his throat, wetting his muzzle, of snapping tendons and bones and licking the marrow from them.

When it’s finally quiet -- when the screaming stops and it’s just him left, he’s still hungry, still furious.

He hears the other wolf coming long before he arrives, and he knows it’s because the other wolf is letting him hear it, that he wants him to know he’s on his way. They’ll hunt together, Clint knows, because that’s what packmates are for.

So when his packmate arrives and he’s not a wolf at all but a man, Clint bares his teeth in a fierce growl.

“Shit,” his packmate says. “ _Fuck_. Fuck. Barton. Clint. I’m -- it’s okay. You’re okay.”

Clint doesn’t understand the words and he snaps his teeth as his packmate crouches before him, reaching out a hand.

Clint sinks his teeth into his wrist, drawing blood, licking it from his lips even as his packmate yanks his hand back and _growls_.

It’s instant. Clint, confused at first by his packmate’s form, understands that growl on a visceral, instinctive level, and he whines, flinching away and baring his throat, and all he knows is that he’s displeased the only other creature he’s ever wanted to please.

“Fuck,” he says again, and then the man sinks onto his hands and knees, a move much more graceful than any move Clint has ever made -- almost as if he doesn’t feel any pain as his body shudders, arches, changes.

He’s a much bigger wolf than Clint is, and Clint’s half convinced he’s about to get his throat ripped out, and he bares his throat again and trembles.

But his packmate just licks at the blood-slicked fur around his mouth, licking until Clint stops trembling because he realizes-- he recognizes --

He knows him, he knows him to the marrow of his bones, this is not just a packmate, this is his alpha.

It’s soothing and grounding in a way nothing has ever been soothing before, and Clint realizes that everything will be okay now, because his alpha will never make a decision that isn’t in Clint’s best interest -- even if that decision is to rip out Clint’s throat.

The anxiety in his bones melts away and so does the wolf.

His body shatters, back bone cracking as he arches up, bone and tendon rearranging in a messy rush of a pain sharper than any he’s ever felt before --

And he knows it’s worse than anything he’s ever felt before because as that pain falls away, so does the animal instinct, so does the sharp teeth, the claws, the animal ears, the fur, and then he’s not a monster anymore, he’s Clint, and he’s naked, on his hands and knees in a puddle of blood-slick leaves and blood-soaked soil, with bits and pieces of what used to be human beings scattered in the mess that used to be their clothing, their weapons.

He’s bathed in blood and he’s choking on it, and the terror is nearly enough to send him shaking back into that animalistic place again, except he doesn’t know how, and the moon is hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds now and not showing him the way.

“Shh,” Bucky says, quiet, his wolf gone just as fast as it came. His hands are bloody but he keeps running them through Clint’s hair as Clint trembles and panics and falls apart.

There’s blood on the side of Bucky’s face too and Clint knows he caused that, and he can’t breathe.

“I’ve got you,” Bucky says grimly. “Breathe. I’ve got you.”

*

Clint throws up halfway back to the cottage and it’s all blood and bits of someone who isn’t him, and that makes him want to throw up all over again.

He’s on his hands and knees, breathing hard, trying his best to spit the taste of Hydra blood out of his mouth, and wondering how he got here, while Bucky crouches beside him one hand between his shoulder blades, a grounding touch.

Clint is naked. So is Bucky. This is all so fucked.

“I did tell you we needed to talk about things,” Bucky says quietly.

Clint rubs at his mouth with the back of his hand and when he speaks, his voice sounds wrecked. “I feel like you should’ve been a bit more forceful about this kind of conversation.”

Bucky drags him back to his feet and leads the way through the forest, and it’s only through focusing on Bucky’s even breathing that Clint manages not to jump and panic at every snap of branches, every strange animal heartbeat, filling up the spaces between the trees all around him.

Back at the cottage, Bucky grimly shoves Clint into the bathroom with a soft, worn towel and a toothbrush. For a moment, still stunned by everything that had happened, Clint just stands there, listening as Bucky goes about turning on a pot of coffee. It takes too long to shake off the feeling that he ought to be finding a dark, quiet hole to hide in -- a den? Does he want a motherfucking den? What even is his life anymore -- and then Clint turns on the shower as hot as it’ll go.

It runs red for a long, long time after he gets in it.

Once he’s out and wrapped up in a soft pair of Bucky’s PJs that are too short in the ankle and too wide in the shoulders, Bucky hands him a mug of coffee, kicks a chair at the table out for him, and gives him enough time to take one grateful sip before he says, “So, you’re a werewolf.”

He didn’t give Clint time to swallow, and Clint chokes.

Once he’s got himself under control, he says, “What the fuck!”

Bucky shrugs, glaring out the window. “You wanted more forceful,” he says. “You didn’t listen when I tried telling you not to run off. Maybe now you’ll listen.”

“Why would I -- how-- it’s not even. Look. Barnes. You gotta know how stupid that sounds. I can’t be -- there’s no such thing as -- It’s not even a full moon!”

“Myth,” he says, turning his glare to the table top, scowling as he traces a scratch on it that may or may not have come from motherfucking werewolf claws. “We don’t just turn at the full moon -- though we do turn at the full moon. But emotions can cause it, too.”

“Emotions can --” Clint throws up his hands. “What the fuck. Okay, maybe, instead of just jumping in, you should start at the beginning.”

Bucky finally looks at him, shooting him a quick glare. “How far back?” he asks acidically. “1944?”

“1944-- no. Jesus. What about… the night with the wolves. And Hydra. I should’ve died. I was dying, and you -- you, what? You were the wolves? You hunted me? You fucking -- you _bit_ me?” He’s getting a little hysterical, he knows it, but he feels he can be forgiven. After all, he’d just eaten some Hydra agents.

Bucky takes a deep breath and then says, “I heard the wolves that were following you.”

“Real wolves or werewolves? Is there a pack of werewolves out here? Do you have a _pack_? Jesus Christ, Barnes, did your werewolf pack--”

“Regular wolves,” Bucky snaps. “You wanna hear this, or not?”

Clint makes a ‘carry on’ motion with one hand while the other brings his coffee up to his mouth and he takes a few desperate gulps.

“I heard the wolves following you, thought you were Hydra, was gonna let them have you, and then you mumbled something about being shot by Hydra, so you probably weren’t Hydra, so it was bite you or let you die, so.” He shrugs. “I bit you.”

Clint squints at him, looking for any hint of apology, and he doesn’t find it, but Bucky still won’t make eye contact with him.

“Oh,” Clint says, after a long pause.

He wants to laugh but he keeps his lips pressed tightly together. 

There is no way this can be real.

Except.

He just ate some Hydra agents.

He smothers a giggle and then barely makes it to the bathroom in time to puke.

Clint doesn’t bother coming out of the bathroom for a while, and eventually, Bucky joins him there, silently handing him a cup of tea that’s probably meant to calm his stomach.

He sips at it, leaning against the wall near the toilet, breathing carefully through his nose, and for the first time in his life, he can’t figure out a single thing to say.

Finally, Bucky breaks the silence, sitting on the floor across the tiny bathroom. “If it helps, I’m sorry.”

Clint looks at him sideways. “The way you tell it, you saved my life.”

“Seems you shoulda had a choice, though.”

“Did you?”

Bucky pulls a knee up, wraps an arm around it, and stares at the shower curtain when he says, “No.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Fell off a train and woke up this way, long time ago.”

Clint takes another sip of tea and winces. “Hydra did it?”

“Couldn’t seem to make a super soldier,” Bucky says, like it’s easy. “Made me instead. Super strength, super speed, super healing. Practically the same.”

“Except for the…” Clint trails off, because mentioning the fangs and the claws and the fur just reminds him of the way his fangs and his claws tore through those Hydra agents, the way he’d been slick with their blood. He clears his throat and says, “Except for the other stuff.”

“Yeah.”

Clint closes his eyes and says, “It gonna take me 70 years to learn not to eat my friends?”

Bucky laughs, soft. “No,” he says, and then he pauses. “Well. Maybe. I don’t know.”

With a sinking feeling in his gut, Clint says, “You’ve never done this before.”

“Dealt with a pup?” Bucky asks, cocking his head. “No.”

“But you can control yourself,” Clint says. “How’d you figure it out? Just teach me.”

“Hydra trained me,” Bucky tells him, abruptly getting to his feet. “You don’t want to learn that way.”

Clint scrambles up to follow him. “But wait,” he says. “How’d they train you? If it worked, isn’t it worth--”

“How else do you teach a dog to fight?” Bucky says, cold, and Clint snaps his mouth shut because he knows about dog fighting rings and he knows about how those dogs are taught to fight and there’s just about nothing in the world that makes him angrier.

“They didn’t,” he says, voice low -- practically a growl.

“Get a softer dog, tie it up, teach a bigger dog to rip it apart,” Bucky says, like it’s nothing, like he’s talking about the weather. “Teach it that mercy fucks you over -- makes them hurt you worse. Praise them, the louder the softer dog screams.”

“They _didn’t_.” His teeth feel a bit too sharp now.

“You don’t wanna learn like I did,” Bucky says, walking out of the bathroom.

It takes Clint a long, long time before his teeth stop being sharp enough to cut his tongue.

*

“You missed check in. Twice.”

Clint closes his eyes, his smile a little strained, and switches the phone to his other ear. “Hey, Nat. It’s me.”

“I know it’s you,” she snaps. “This isn’t your phone. Where are you?”

“I’m… everything’s okay, first of all. But I’m gonna need to disappear for a while and I need you to, you know. Let me.”

She’s quiet for a moment, calculating, and Clint preemptively winces. “I could be convinced,” she says finally. “If you’re sure.”

He knows she’s waiting for something -- they’ve worked together long enough to have developed a series of coded phrases that he’d be able to use now, if he’d been kidnapped, if he was held at gunpoint, if there were more or less than six hostiles, if he was injured, if he just needed a bit of time to get himself out of whatever situation he’d gotten himself into. But they hadn’t come up with a code for “got bitten by Cap’s old friend who’s a werewolf” so Clint sticks as close to the truth as he can get.

“I’ve just got to work some things out,” he says, and it’s vague -- too vague -- but he doesn’t know what else to say.

“You’re safe?”

Is he? He looks at Bucky, who’s doing a crossword puzzle across the cottage and pretending not to listen to every word. Hell, with wolf hearing, he can probably hear everything Natasha’s saying too.

“I’m okay,” he says finally. “Not injured in any way. Promise. Just, make sure Kate’s taking care of Lucky, okay?”

“Clint--” she says, but he cuts her off.

“Just give me some time, okay?”

He hears her exhale, long and slow. “Call me if you need me,” she says.

“Always.”

After he hangs up, Bucky takes the phone back and crushes it in one hand.

Clint is too tired to be turned on by that, but he thinks distantly that it might be something to think about, next time he’s alone in the shower without a guy with super hearing in the next room.

He drinks some more coffee and listens to birds singing outside the cottage and wonders if being able to hear that is worth the trade off.

*

“You were human when you went after Steve,” Clint says, as Bucky builds a fire in the woodburning stove, probably just for something to do with his hands. God knows Clint can’t feel the cold.

“An assassin who does all his killing in animal form isn’t much use,” Bucky grunts, shoving more wood onto the fire.

“So you can control it.”

“Yes.”

“And I can learn to control it. And then I can go home.”

Bucky shoots him a look. “You might not want to?” he says, sounding uncertain for the first time.

“Of course I will,” Clint tells him. “Lucky’s at home. And Natasha. And Katie-Kate. And my tenants. And my job. And my friends.”

Sitting back on his heels, Bucky watches the fire consume the wood he’d added and rubs at the back of his neck and says, “There’s a sort of bond.” He sounds abrupt, terse, like he doesn’t want to have this conversation. “That makes it hard to leave.”

“A bond,” Clint echoes blankly. 

“Between… Well, I.” He grimaces. “I made you. And now there’s a bond. And you won’t want to leave… me. Sorry. It’s, uh. A thing. A pack thing.”

“A pack thing,” Clint says. “A werewolf pack thing. Is that -- that’s why you’re still here, so close to Hydra, hiding out in the forest, because you’ve got a pack--”

“I don’t have a pack,” Bucky snarls. “They are not my pack, I killed any pack they tried to give me.” And then he pauses and licks his lips and shrugs helplessly and says, “Except now, there’s you.”

To his credit, Clint doesn’t dismiss it out of hand. He thinks about it for a moment, considers it, pokes around in the mess of his heart where feelings usually take root with or without his permission, but there’s nothing there, nothing out of the ordinary.

“But I don’t think that will be a problem for me?” he says. “I mean, thanks for the hospitality and thanks for saving my life but I don’t think I’m gonna have a problem going home. As soon as it gets to the point where I’m not going to eat my friends, I think I’m out.”

Bucky storms out without a word and Clint watches the door slam behind him, stunned. He rubs absently at his chest, because there is a feeling there, a niggling sensation -- but it’s guilt, not whatever mystic bond Bucky was talking about, and it’s not his fault if Bucky -- who admitted that he’d never dealt with a new werewolf before -- was expecting something that Clint just wasn’t feeling.

Bucky stays away for a long time, and, as the sun sets and the moon rises -- still so nearly close to full -- Clint starts getting anxious.

It starts off like an itch beneath his skin, an inability to sit still, to concentrate on the beaten up romance novel he’d found on the bookshelf, but as the minutes tick by, it gets more and more uncomfortable.

Clint wonders if this is just his life now, if this is just what the moon is going to do to him as it inches closer to tomorrow night’s full moon. He wonders if Bucky feels this too.

He doesn’t sleep, just sits there on the sofa, staring at the book he found and waiting for Bucky to come back.

Eventually, some time past midnight, Clint gets up and goes to the window and then he goes very still. There’s a wolf out there, so dark, it’s nearly a shadow, and Clint probably wouldn’t have seen it at all, even as great as his eyesight has always been, except he can see better now, even in the dark.

It’s a huge wolf, a hulking dark shape, hovering near the trees and watching the cottage, and Clint knows, he _knows_ it’s Bucky, but he still can’t help the unease that washes over him, the urge to bare his throat or his belly and submit somehow.

Maybe he feels all that _because_ it’s Bucky.

And then the wolf flashes bright red eyes and Clint flinches and falls to his hands and knees with a strangled sound, almost a whimper, a cry of pain as his bones start to shift and stretch beyond his control. His nails elongate and dig into the floorboard and his spine starts to separate and Clint cries out again before falling to his side, his body convulsing, half-shifted, before the wolf side fades away again and he’s just broken and twisted and panting.

And Bucky still doesn’t come inside. 

Clint lays there and tries to piece himself back together again until finally, exhausted and sticky with drying sweat, he falls asleep.

*

He wakes up carefully tucked into bed, blanket pulled up to his chin, cup of coffee cooling on the bedside table.

Clint can feel something like anxiety running through his veins, an itch that feels like all of his senses are heightened, like he’s going to burst out of his skin.

It’s the full moon tonight.

For a long moment, he just lays there, listening to his breathing, to the anxiety echoing through his body, feeling how it pools in his chest and the palms of his hands and his dick and he wants to _run_ , he wants to hunt, he wants to howl.

He doesn’t. He just lays very still and breathes and wonders why the fuck he’s hard. He kind of wants to roll over and rub against the mattress but it’s Bucky’s mattress and that’s fucking weird and where the fuck is Bucky anyway --

He knows where Bucky is before he finishes the thought because he can _feel_ him, an electric presence in his chest. He’s close, holding very still, trying to stay quiet, but Clint can feel Bucky’s heart pulsing in his own chest.

He rolls out of bed and stretches and tries to shake the pinprick anxiety out of his hands but it doesn’t work. He yawns so big, his jaw clicks.

If he already feels this out of control at it isn’t even noon yet, what’s going to happen when the moon rises?

He has a shower. He jerks off. Three times. He doesn’t give a fuck that Bucky can probably hear it.

Hell, part of him wants him to.

Clint does _not_ like the full moons. He does not like pulling pants on after his shower. He can’t convince himself to pull on a shirt. Clothes are constricting and he hates them and he growls a little bit as he paces out to the main room, where Bucky’s sitting very still and looking haunted at the little kitchen table. He’s cradling a mug of coffee and he’s made one for Clint.

It’s kinda the first morning that Clint hasn’t woken up feeling like he needs coffee to make it til noon.

Bucky’s staring at something just over Clint’s shoulder and his cheeks are pink, heart rate elevated, breathing a little fast. He sorta sounds like -- smells like -- prey.

Clint is _not_ going to hunt Bucky. Okay?

Not even when his throat starts tightening up because that’s how badly he wants to get his mouth on --

“What the fuck,” Clint says, ragged.

Bucky winces a little. “It’s, uh. The moon.” He gestures broadly with the hand not holding his coffee mug. “It does that. Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” he asks, taking the mug, draining it. It doesn’t help. “What does it do the rest of the time?”

“Somewhere on the spectrum between horny as fuck or murderous. It depends. If you’re feeling safe, then you want to. You know.” He wrinkles his nose. “Mate. If you’re feeling threatened, you want to kill. It’s just instinct.”

“Yeah but you’re not going for my throat _or_ my dick, so where are you on the sex/murder scale?”

“Nowhere.” Bucky gets up, takes his mug to the sink, which effectively turns his back to Clint. He’s wearing flannel, and Clint curls his fists because he wants to go over there and push against him and rub all over him and jesus christ, this is a disaster.

“I’ve got control over all of it. Hydra’s training was very effective in helping me gain complete control over every aspect of it.”

Right. Through torture and pain. 

Clint grits his teeth because there’s a wave of other instinct crashing over him now -- his teeth growing pointy, his claws sharp, and now he wants to hunt, he wants to find whoever hurt Bucky and tear them apart, he wants to make them pay, he --

Bucky’s there suddenly, both hands on Clint’s shoulders, almost cradling his neck, his eyes dark and worried. “Hey,” he says roughly. “Clint. Breathe. You’re fine. I’m fine. It’s just the moon.”

Sucking in a ragged breath, Clint closes his eyes and says, “So that’s the murder side of the spectrum.”

“Yeah. Listen.” He lets his hands fall away and Clint swallows back a whine. “I think the best thing we can do is work off some of this energy.”

Clint’s eyes pop open, wide, because, what, are they going to fuck, is Bucky suggesting they have wild, instinctive, wolfy sex to burn off some of this energy, because Clint is so fucking down for that.

“Let’s go for a run,” Bucky says.

The disappointment is sharp but not unexpected, and Clint swallows against it and says, “I don’t have any shoes.”

“You won’t want any,” Bucky tells him. “C’mon.”

The feeling of the cold forest floor under Clint’s bare feet is bracing, grounding in a way Clint needs, and he runs further, faster than he’s ever run before, until his lungs are burning with crisp forest air and his muscles ache.

It’s not tiring at all, it’s exhilarating, and not even the constricting sweats he’s wearing can ruin it.

*

The day stretches into late afternoon and the itching in Clint’s veins only increases exponentially the closer to moonrise it gets. He’s over-sensitized. He feels each brush of wind like a physical touch against his skin, his sense of smell is so intense, he can _taste_ the scent of leaves, the rabbits hiding in the underbrush, the creek rushing over well-worn river rocks.

And the hearing -- the layers upon layers of sound -- they rush over him like water colour over canvas, painting pictures he hasn’t heard since he was a child. 

He needs to seek out the source of every sound, and for hours, Bucky indulges him, staying close and reassuring him when he can’t identify a specific sound and gets startled by it.

And Bucky’s scent. It’s there, the whole day, growing more and more noticable, more and more delicious, with each passing moment, and Clint just -- he just needs, and he’s not sure what he needs more -- to run or to howl or to chase down that rabbit and taste its blood running down his throat or to just… just take off into the woods because he knows if he does, Bucky’ll give chase, and Clint really wants to know what’ll happen when Bucky catches him.

He can’t stop thinking about that panic attack the other day, when the only thing that would calm him down was Bucky’s blunt teeth, carefully pressed against the vulnerable place where his neck joins his shoulder and each time he remembers it, Clint shivers a little.

If Bucky thought going for a run would burn off this energy, he was wrong. 

They stumble upon the rocky embankment of a river that’s running swiftly, twisting into angry rapids around the rocks below. And Clint wants to jump it.

He’s a fucking werewolf, he knows how this needs to work -- he’s got super strength or whatever, bounding over one simple river ought to be easy.

Bucky reads his intention and says, “Wait, Clint, don’t --”

But Clint runs and leaps without pausing to think about it too much, and of course his bare foot hits a sharp stone as he does, and he yelps, twisting his ankle and stumbling and, rather than easily clearing the river, he plunges right into it.

The cold is shockingly intense and sudden, and it knocks the breath clear from his lungs. Sucking in frigid water is instinct, even as he fights against the brutal current, but he can’t tell up from down or anything in between.

He can’t be in the water more than a handful of seconds before Bucky’s got him by the arm, kicking off against the rocky bottom of the river and forcing them both up to the surface. They’re still twisting and turning in the current and Clint’s coughing and gasping wildly for breath, but Bucky shoves him up and out of the river like it’s easy, heaving himself up onto the muddy embankment a moment after.

He’s wet and scowling and all his layers are clinging to him like a second skin and Clint’s already had the wind knocked out of him but the way Bucky’s sweater is clinging to his chest would take his breath away all over again if it could.

The cold dunking in the river has done nothing for the ache in his bones to run and to be caught and now, stretched out on his back with Bucky on his hands and knees above, Clint feels almost like he has been.

“Bucky,” he says, and his voice is wrecked. Bucky’s eyes darken a little, his jaw flinching.

“You’re an idiot,” he snaps. “With no sense of self-preservation.”

Clint’s eyelids flutter shut because he can’t help it -- he wants to arch up and fucking purr at Bucky when he growls like that. Instead, he licks his lips and curls his hands into fists so he won’t give into the instinct to touch and he says, “I hurt my foot -- you should kiss it better.”

Bucky growls for real this time, low and rough and something in Clint wants him to bare his throat. He doesn’t, and a moment later, Bucky’s hand is on the side of his neck, thumb pressing up against his jaw just firmly enough to hurt.

“How have you made it this far without anybody teaching you to obey?”

Clint goes very still and says, with just a hint of a smirk on his lips, “People’ve tried. It didn’t stick.”

“I can’t keep you safe if you don’t listen to me,” Bucky tells him, voice so low, Clint feels it in his chest. “If you don’t trust me.”

It’s too much, and Clint can’t help the way his eyelashes flutter, his mouth falling open the tiniest bit. He just -- he just needs Bucky to touch him, he’s going to shake apart if Bucky doesn’t fucking touch him.

“Bucky,” he says, cracking on the word. “I don’t want you to keep me safe.”

It’s like Bucky’s realizing how compromising their situation is for the first time. Clint’s stretched out on his back, Bucky hovering over him, his hand on Clint’s throat the only place they’re touching, but Clint’s already panting, pretty much begging for it, and Bucky goes very still.

He looks like he’s going to run, like he doesn’t know how he got here in the first place, and Clint’s frantically trying to think of what he can do or say to make him stay when Bucky carefully, slowly, slides his thumb the tiny distance from Clint’s jaw to the corner of his mouth.

From there, it’s only too easy for Clint to soften his jaw, let his mouth fall open again, just enough so that Bucky’s thumb slips inside.

The taste and the texture against Clint’s tongue is too much when he’s already so over-sensitized, and he whines softly as he bites down, just enough to leave marks, though he’s not sure how long they’ll last.

“Clint,” Bucky says, all kinds of uncertainty in his tone, and he pulls his thumb from Clint’s mouth but leaves it pressed against his bottom lip, and Clint can feel how wet it is from his mouth. He licks at it, a quick, rough brush of the tip of his tongue, and he hears the way Bucky’s breath catches in his chest.

“Please,” Clint says. “Bucky.”

Bucky hesitates, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth, hard enough to leave marks, and then he says, careful, “You’re a mess, Barton. You’re high on new instincts you don’t understand and you don’t know what you’re asking for.”

The idea that Clint, even running on an adrenaline high from the moon and the forest and the fact that he’s a goddamn werewolf, doesn’t know what he wants here is so misinformed, Clint would laugh if he wasn’t so desperate to find the exact words to tell Bucky what he wants.

He decides brutal honesty is the way to go.

“I’ve got a self-control problem,” he says. “Not a consent problem. And I know exactly what I want.” He reaches a hand up, curls it in the wet neckline of Bucky’s sweater, and twists it a little until it’s tighter around Bucky’s throat, almost like a collar. “I want you on top of me,” he says, because it seems a fair place to start. “All over me. Behind me. Either. Any. All of it. I don’t care. I just want you pressed up next to me and inside me with your teeth in my neck, here --” he touches the same place, the one he remembers Bucky’s teeth pressed against, so carefully before, where sometimes it still feels like he’s got bruises. “I want your teeth here, holding me still for you.”

Bucky’s exhale is ragged and his eyes are very dark and he tugs at Clint’s hand, still tangled in his sweater. “If you want me holding you still, why are you holding me?” he says, so rough and low that Clint shudders, closing his eyes as his mouth goes dry, both hands falling to the ground on either side of his head. He wants and he wants and he’s so scared Bucky won’t give it to him.

“Please,” he says again, quiet and desperate, and then his breath catches in his throat when Bucky carefully, deliberately presses both hands to Clint’s wrists, holding them there above his head.

“Okay,” he says, soft. “Hold still for me.”

It feels like all the breath gets punched right out of Clint’s chest. “I will,” he says. “I will, just touch me.”

Bucky shifts, moving over him to settle on his thighs, so he’s leaning over Clint while Bucky pants up at him, trying to get his breathing under control.

“Keep your hands up there,” Bucky says, and Clint’ll do just about anything if Bucky keeps touching him, so he just nods, crossing his wrists above his head.

Bucky looks at him, at the way Clint’s chest is heaving and bare, the way his pants have slipped low over his hip bones, pulled down by the weight of the water. He doesn’t touch him, not for a long moment, and then when he does, it’s to tangle his fingers in Clint’s wet hair and tug, a firm pressure that only eases when Clint lets Bucky tip his head back, baring his throat.

“I can’t have a packmate who’s got a problem with authority,” Bucky tells him, still quiet.

Clint swallows and closes his eyes and says, “Hey, I’m doing good, I’m doing what you said, I’m holding still.”

“You’re doing so good,” Bucky tells him, and Clint just focuses on breathing, on holding still, on not shoving Bucky over and crawling on top of him and speeding this up because he likes it fast and messy and he isn’t at all used to being told he’s doing anything right or anything well, especially something as simple as holding still. It makes him want to do more, to do better, so Bucky doesn’t change his mind.

Bucky slides one hand from Clint’s jaw down the line of his neck to his shoulder, to the place he’d marked with his teeth before, and then runs his thumb along where sometimes, Clint can still feel his teeth. He tugs, so Clint has to arch up just a little bit, until it’s just shy of painful on his shoulders, and leans in close, so Clint can feel his breath against his skin but not his mouth.

“It’s a submission thing,” he says, voice still low and dark, like this is easy for him, like he’s not about to vibrate out of his skin here. Clint -- Clint’s just focusing on breathing in short bursts, on pressing his lips together so he doesn’t start to beg.

Bucky presses his thumb to that spot, hard enough to leave a bruise, and says, “An animal instinct thing. All of this -- baring your throat to me, wanting my teeth here. It’s because I’m your alpha. Is that what you want? To submit to me?”

Is it? Clint’s got a problem with authority figures, he always has, he doesn’t know how good he’ll be at _submission_ but he wants it, his entire body wants it, it’s just his tongue that gets all tangled up around the words.

“Clint,” Bucky says again, patient. “I need you to say it. D’you want to?”

“I -- I want to try,” Clint says, his mouth dry. His voice shreds a little and he adds, “I’m not very good at it.”

Bucky finally presses his mouth to Clint’s neck, an opened-mouth kiss and the barest brush of his tongue. “I’ll teach you,” he says.

Clint’s self-control is fragile at the best of time, and he can’t handle this anymore, this holding still and barely being touched, and he blinks back frustrated tears and says, “Please, just please, I need you to touch me, I’ll do anything, I need -- Bucky, _please_.”

When Bucky finally gives into it, it’s a rush of sensation -- his teeth digging into the muscle at Clint’s shoulder, his body coming down on top of Clint’s, his wet sweater pressed against Clint’s chest and his hips too. He’s hard, thank fuck, because Clint doesn’t think this is going to last too long, and he’s already so hard, it hurts.

Bucky’s teeth at his shoulder hurt in the best way and Clint arches up, he can’t help pushing into the pain, even as he keeps his arms up over his head. Tangling a hand in Clint’s hair to keep his head tipped back, Bucky slides his other hand down to Clint’s hips and then around to his ass, pressing him close.

“Jesus Christ,” Clint hisses, overwhelmed and holding so still, his muscles start shaking. “Oh fuck, Bucky, just. I need less clothes and I need your mouth and I need--”

Bucky relaxes his jaw and soothes the teeth marks with his tongue and says, amused, “You’re a little mouthy.”

“Mouthy?” Clint echoes, unable to help a laugh, because no one’s ever had a problem with his mouth before. “I’ll show you mouthy.”

And then he moves, because fuck it, he’s never been good with authority ever, and shoves Bucky, taking him off guard and flipping him onto his back so Clint can climb on top, straddling him. Bucky blinks up at him, mouth hanging open the tiniest bit in surprise, and Clint shoves his own hair out of his eyes, grins down at him and says, “Next time, I wanna be on my knees for you.”

“What?” Bucky asks, stunned. Clint leans down and bites him, hard, in the same place Bucky had bitten him, worrying the muscle between his teeth for a moment, and he feels Bucky’s entire body lock up with tension, his hands coming up to Clint’s hips like he’s going to push Clint off, but all he does is hold on tightly enough to bruise.

Clint kisses the mark he left and says, “You don’t want that, Buck? Me on my knees for you, begging you to fuck my mouth?” Bucky’s breathing goes funny and Clint hides a grin against his shoulder and shifts his hips, grinding down, as he nuzzles against Bucky’s temple and adds in a whisper, “I’d be so good for you, Bucky.”

Bucky hisses, throwing his head back a little, holding him more tightly, and saying, “You really aren’t good at this submission thing, are you?”

Clint grins down at him, grinds against him until Bucky’s eyes are wide and dark and his breathing is heavy, and says, “You want me to do what you say? You’re gonna have to make me.”

Growling, Bucky sits up, hand tangling in Clint’s hair and jerking him closer, so Clint’s caught, nearly helpless, on his lap. He kisses him hard, all teeth and tongue, while his free hand cradles the back of Clint’s neck, thumb pressing hard into the place his teeth had marked, and Clint can’t help moaning into his mouth.

It’s perfect -- it’s rough and messy and just how Clint likes it, so when Bucky suddenly breaks the kiss and shoves Clint away, Clint falls to his hands and knees a little too hard, skinning his palms on the ground. Before he can worry that Bucky’s changed his mind or Clint’s done something wrong, Bucky’s pressed up behind him, achingly hard against his ass and nuzzling the back of his neck, tugging him up so Clint’s on his knees, back pressed to Bucky’s chest.

“I told you to be still,” Bucky says, but his voice is rough and warm even as he tugs one arm behind Clint’s back, holding it there, other hand low on his hips. “I thought you wanted me to touch you.”

Clint arches back, he can’t help it, and rubs against where he can feel Bucky hard against him, and breathes, “Fuck, yes, please.”

“Then be good.”

Clint laughs breathlessly and lets his head fall back against Bucky’s shoulder, humming at the way Bucky’s stubble is rough against his cheek. It’s only a moment later that Bucky’s shoving Clint’s pants down around his thighs, and Clint’s already hard and leaking when Bucky wraps a hand around him.

Clint’s had his share of hand jobs before, but not many. In the circus, efficiency was everything, and it was a lot more efficient to swallow the mess than to have to clean it up after. And after that, he was usually at a hook up’s place or his own place or a bar bathroom -- again with the efficiency -- or someplace where there was a bed and lube and a shower for later. Sex isn’t about imagination, it’s about getting off, and that’s the way he likes it.

This, though. This is a whole different thing. He feels bare and vulnerable and captured, held still by Bucky’s hand braced against his chest, by his pants tangled around his thighs, and Bucky’s jerking him off with careful, measured strokes that aren’t as fast and hard as Clint needs, forcing him to slow down when all he wants to do is go faster.

“You need to breathe,” Bucky tells him, which is bullshit because Clint _is_ breathing, he’s _been_ breathing, he’s breathing so fast, he feels like his chest is going to burst, and he tosses his head against Bucky’s shoulder and whines and says, “You need to fucking make me come already.”

Bucky laughs, turns his head so he’s nuzzling against Clint’s neck, and says, “You haven’t asked me to, and I’m trying to teach you to be good. Remember?”

“Please make me come,” Clint says, and a distant point of him wonders when it became almost second nature to beg Bucky this way, when Clint always made it a point of pride not to beg for anything. He just needs it so much. “Please, Bucky, I want to be good for you, I’m trying to be good, I just need --”

 

Bucky presses a kiss to the corner of his jaw that’s almost sweet and tightens his grip and it’s nearly too much, Clint’s already buzzing with adrenaline and desperation and he whines, arching up and fucking into Bucky’s fist, one hand coming up to reach behind him, tangling in Bucky’s hair for leverage. The other is still pinned behind his back and it hurts and that just makes him want it more.

“Are you going to come for me?” Bucky asks him, and his voice is husky, he’s breathing heavily, and Clint can feel him hard and aching against his ass and he wants to beg Bucky to hold him down, to fuck him, to come inside him, but all he can do is whimper and twist against his grip and hold on.

He blinks back frustrated tears and swallows back a whine, and Bucky hushes him and presses an opened mouth kiss to the side of his neck where he’d bitten before, and that’s it, that’s enough, Clint’s arching up and coming hard on his own fucking chest and he doesn’t even care because it feels like all the breath and capability of giving a shit gets kicked right out of him.

He turns his head and hides his face against Bucky and he’s breathing so hard, he’s feeling dizzy from it, his skin is still crawling with that energy, but it’s dulled now, softer, like Bucky’s taken the edge off just enough.

“Okay?” Bucky asks him, still supporting him, still careful, even as he drags a hand up over Clint’s chest, through the come he can feel there.

“I’m. I.” Clint lifts his head and blinks up at the sky and tries to force his thoughts into some sort of order because he’s not gonna let a fucking hand job in the middle of the woods be the best orgasm he’s ever had, he’s got standards, he’s got self-respect, he’s --

He’s fucking awesome at compartmentalization, is what he is, and he definitely doesn’t want to talk about how he’d begged Bucky to touch him, or any of the rest of it, and the very best way to shut himself up, he realized long ago, is to keep his mouth full.

He’s still shaking when he pulls away from Bucky, still on his knees, and he turns, staggers a little bit, has to grab onto Bucky’s shoulders to brace himself. And then he blinks up at Bucky with wide, glazed eyes and says, “Are you going to fuck my mouth now?”

Bucky’s cheeks are flushed and his eyes are dark and he looks a little bit more affected than Clint thinks maybe he wants to. But he hesitates and his eyes are drawn to Clint’s mouth and he says thickly, “Do you want me to?”

Compartmentalization aside, Clint does. He wants it so badly, his mouth is watering at the idea of it. So he takes Bucky’s hand, the one that had trailed through the come on Clint’s chest, and tugs it up to his mouth, dragging his tongue roughly up his thumb and then sucking on the tip before letting it go.

“Yes,” he says, blinking up at Bucky. “Please.”

Bucky scrambles to his feet and unsnaps his jeans and Clint thinks it might be the first time he’s seen him do anything without an innate sense of grace.

His dick, when he finally gets his jeans down around his thighs, is thick and hard, already leaking precome, and Clint’s breathing picks up just looking at it. He flicks his tongue over the head, lapping at the mess he can see gathered there before sucking it into his mouth.

He’s so thick and Clint wants to feel him pushing inside him so badly, but the woods, he knows, are not the most convenient places for sex, so for now this will have to do. He wants to swallow him down, to take him as deep as he can, because he’s good at this, he knows he’s good at this, but he’s trying to be fucking good for Bucky.

And part of him just wants to let Bucky use him however he wants.

Bucky’s tentative at first, like he’s not sure Clint can take all of him, but it doesn’t last long at all before his hands are tangled in Clint’s hair and he’s fucking Clint’s mouth, and he’s deep in his throat and Clint can’t breathe and it’s perfect. It finally narrows down all his senses to only one thing, one sensation, blocking out all the rest. He’s not going to fall to pieces now because the only thing that matters is Bucky’s hands in his hair and his cock in his throat it’s such a fucking relief.

“You’re -- you’re doing so good,” Bucky says, and he sounds wrecked. He cups Clint’s jaw with one hand, thumb pressing into his bottom lip, so Bucky can feel the way it’s stretched around him.

Clint closes his eyes because they’re burning with tears and he hollows his cheeks and Bucky makes a rough, broken sound low in his throat. Bucky tugs at his hair like he’s trying to pull away, like he’s going to come and wants to be fucking polite about it, and Clint can’t help but whine a little, he wants to taste him so, so badly. That tiny, desperate sound is what sends Bucky over the edge, exhaling harshly as he comes all over Clint’s tongue and down his throat and Clint swallows around him, sucking gently until Bucky carefully pushes him away and falls to his knees.

“Jesus,” he says shakily, hands on Clint’s shoulders, patting at him clumsily like he’s having trouble controlling his hands but wants to make sure Clint’s okay.

Clint is very, very okay. His mouth feels swollen and he can taste Bucky on his lips when he licks them.

Clint’s feeling a little shaky too, if he’s feeling honest, so when Bucky carefully tugs him close, Clint’s only too happy to fall against him, hiding his face in Bucky’s shoulder and breathing him in.

He’s sticky and covered in come and now Bucky’s sweater is too. It’s only fair.

“Hey,” Bucky says after a while, smoothing Clint’s hair back off his forehead. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, and his voice is rough from Bucky’s cock in his throat and he feels the way Bucky shivers at that.

“We should, uh. We should maybe…” Bucky’s hands are stroking Clint’s back restlessly, like he’s the one struggling to settle now.

“Nap,” Clint tells him, smothering a yawn against his shoulder. “Nap and then go back to your place and then you can fuck me.”

“Jesus,” Bucky says again, running a palm down the middle of Clint’s back, soothing. “I was gonna say head home, but that’s because it’s almost moonrise, and if we change out here, we’ll lose our pants out in the woods.”

Clint lifts his head and blinks at Bucky and then looks up at the sky. It’s getting dark.

“Oh shit,” he says, and now he’s nervous. “What’s gonna happen?” he asks. “Am I -- before, when I changed, I wasn’t me at all, I killed those guys, I ate them, I -- what if I hurt you?”

Bucky tugs gently on his hair to stop his panicky train of thought and says, “You won’t hurt me. I told you. I’m your alpha. I’ll keep you in control. I’ll keep you safe.”

Clint takes a deep breath and says, “Will you keep me from eating bunnies?”

“I’ll do my best,” Bucky promises, before helping him to his feet. He pulls his damp sweater over his head and uses it to wipe the come off Clint’s chest, mumbling something about how hard it would be to get it out of wolf fur, and then starts leading the way back home.

They’ve come too far, though, and don’t make it.

The other time Clint had changed, it had been fast, a response to pain and adrenaline. This time, he and Bucky have made it halfway home with the pull of the moon becomes too much, when the itchy sensation Clint’s been feeling all day coalesces into something he can’t ignore.

He stumbles, falling to his knees, his back arching and bones cracking, and the pain is enough to make him gasp, vision whiting out.

“It hurts,” he says, and when he can breathe, when he can see again, Bucky’s on his knees in front of him, looking grim. “You get used to it,” he says, and then Clint’s spine is rupturing and rearranging and all he knows is pain.

He’s too far gone to notice when his screams become howls instead.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint wakes up feeling like he’s back at the circus, body bruised and beaten and head suffering the effects of what feels like a truly spectacular hangover.

Sunlight is touching his face and it’s too bright, the distant sound of birdsong and the wind through the trees is too much. He groans and burrows under his blankets and prays for sleep or death, whichever’s easiest.

There are footsteps, soft and careful, and then the gentle sound of a mug being set down nearby. “Coffee,” Bucky says, quiet. “And Advil. It should help while your body heals up.”

Clint cracks open one gritty eye, sees Bucky standing on the edge of the loft, dressed in too many layers again and hovering like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Everything’s a haze of achy pains, irritation, and exhaustion, and for a long moment, Clint can’t muster the energy to remember why he feels like so much shit.

And then he groans again. “Aw, shit,” he says, shoving his head under his pillow. “I’m a werewolf.”

Bucky hesitates -- Clint can hear the floorboards shift under his feet and he wishes he was deaf again so he could just turn everything off.

“You’ll feel better in a few hours,” Bucky says, and it sounds like he turns to head back down the stairs.

Clint grumbles under his breath and reaches out for him, gesturing impatiently, and Bucky hesitates. “Your coffee’s over there,” he says. “Do you need something else?”

It’s a huge sacrifice, but Clint manages to open both eyes this time to glare at him. “Get in here,” he snaps. “Stop hovering and stop making noise and just --” He makes grabby hands again.

Bucky looks bemused, but he steps closer. “In the bed?” he asks. “With you?”

“You’re loud,” Clint moans. “And everything hurts.”

Bucky gives in, carefully climbing into the bed, over Clint, and settling stiffly on the other side, near the wall and the window. They’re close enough now that his scent settles over Clint, soothing and softening the pain and anxiety Clint hadn’t even known he was feeling, like Bucky being this close means he’s safe, even if he hurts.

“Better,” Clint hums, before wiggling back against Bucky, reaching for his arm, tugging it so that it’s draped over Clint’s waist and they’re basically spooning. It’s warm and safe and he already feels better.

“Don’t move,” He grumbles at Bucky. “Don’t talk. Just. It’s sleeping time.”

He feels a puff of laughter against his shoulder before Bucky finally relaxes against him, snuggling closer and nosing at the back of his neck. “Demanding,” Bucky says.

“Shh.”

Bucky tightens his grip and Clint drifts back to sleep.

His coffee is cold when he wakes up and Bucky is gone, but Clint isn’t in pain any more, so he’s feeling marginally better when he drags himself out of bed.

He’s also fucking starving.

And it’s all Bucky’s fault.

Clint works himself up into quite a state of fury by the time he’s done in the bathroom and drags himself over to the table, slumping into a chair and glaring at Bucky, who seems mostly unfazed by the night before, far too chipper for Clint’s general state of agitation, and also seems entirely fixated on staring down on whatever it is he’s got on the stove.

Whatever it is smells fucking amazing and Clint’s stomach grumbles in agreement.

About half of Clint’s fury with Bucky eases when Bucky slides a plate loaded up with pancakes, bacon, sausage and toast on the table, as well as a giant glass of orange juice and a mug of coffee.

“Okay,” Clint grumbles as he loads up a plate. “You can live.”

Bucky smiles a little, but he’s looking shifty -- his cheeks are a little pink, he won’t make eye contact. Clint’s desperately hoping that a little post-wolfy snuggle fest between bros isn’t enough to send Bucky into this state of awkwardness --

And then he remembers Bucky coming in his mouth shortly before the whole werewolf shenanigans, and he drops his fork.

“Aw, shit,” he says, as Bucky finally makes eye contact, startled by the noise. Clint’s mouth is hanging open, he can feel it is, which is especially unfortunate considering it’s also stuffed with pancake. “Shit, Bucky.”

“You’re going to choke,” Bucky says mildly, but he looks a little tense around the eyes now, like he wants to run. Last time he ran away, he spent the day skulking around the cottage in wolf form.

“You’re flipping out because of the sex,” Clint accuses, scooping up his syrupy fork and pointing it at him.

Bucky scowls and says, “Maybe I’m flipping out because I spent the night keeping you from eating rabbits and getting caught in Hydra traps. You don’t know.”

Clint’s eyes narrow and he shoves more pancake in his mouth because there is never too much pancake in his mouth, chewing spitefully. He swallows, because he’s a goddamn gentleman, and then says, “I didn’t eat any bunnies. I wouldn’t be this hungry if I’d eaten any -- Hydra traps?”

Bucky looks grateful for the subject change. “Hydra likes to set out traps on the full moon,” he says. “Mostly around their facility, because on most nights, that’s where I’ll be. Killing whoever’s stupid enough to be outside. I haven’t figured out if they think I’m stupid enough in wolf form to walk into their traps on the full moon, if the traps are an attempt to keep me from tearing them apart, or if they’re trying to get me back. Either way, I’m not stupid. You, though. You went for every trap in the forest.”

“Huh.” Clint swallows some more pancake. “Well. I mean. Thank you for not letting Hydra get me. And they probably want you back. I mean, if they got you, could they regain control of you?”

Bucky nods reluctantly. “There are certain trigger words they’ve got,” he says. “As well as mental recalibration.”

“So, first we teach me not to be a stupid wolf,” Clint decides. “And then we’ll take them out together. And then we’ll go back to New York.”

“We’re not -- New York is not an option,” Bucky says. “And I’m not letting you go after Hydra. If they find out I’ve got a pack, they’ll take you to get to me, and then they’ll have us both.”

“New York is totally an option. I’ll make it work. But let’s focus on step one -- teach me not to be a stupid wolf. I can’t -- I can’t _not_ control this. I don’t do well if I’m not the one controlling myself. And I don’t remember anything from last night -- and that other night, with the Hydra goons, when I went wolfy? I only remember hazy bits of that. I can’t -- that’s not okay. We need to fix it. Do you remember everything? Were you in control?”

Bucky shrugs. “Yes. But it’s taken 70 years. Everyone you know in New York will be dead by the time --”

“Not an option,” Clint snaps. “So let’s start with control.” He cuts up another chunk of pancake. “Correction, let’s start with breakfast. Then you’ll teach me. Then we’ll negotiate.” He flashes a smug grin. “And whenever you stop flipping out about the sex, we’ll do it again.”

Bucky gets flustered and stands up, like he’s overtaken by a sudden need to take his half empty plate to the sink and conveniently turn away so Clint can’t see how pink his cheeks get.

This is going to be fun.

*

Learning control is a goddamn nightmare. It’s punishment for all his past sins.

Clint wonders desperately if learning the way Bucky had learned would be less painful than this.

He’s sitting as still as he possibly can while an old tape of guided meditation plays in an ancient cassette player, while Bucky, the lucky bastard, does something outside.

Clint’s sitting on the floor with his knees crossed, eyes closed, picturing a serene forest path, a cabin in the woods. He’s imagining the wind against his face and the sun dappling through the trees. He’s constructing a Safe Place in his mind.

Or. Well. He’s fucking trying, okay?

It’s just. Wouldn’t it be more effective to actually be outside, seeing the actual forest, and the actual sunlight?

What good is a 1990s guided meditation to someone trying to learn to be a good werewolf so they don’t eat their best friend’s face?

This is fucking bullshit.

The door slams against the wall when Clint gives up and storms out of the cottage, seething with fury and pent up energy.

“This isn’t working,” he snaps when he finds Bucky, who appears to be chopping wood. Clint freezes, blinks, and says, “Jesus Christ, Barnes. That’s possibly the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, but why are you wearing a sweater, wouldn’t it be easier without a shirt at all, or are you worried about slivers?”

Bucky sets his axe down and frowns. “You’ve only been meditating for ten minutes. The tape isn’t even half over yet.”

Clint throws himself to the ground, stretching out in the lush grass and throwing his hands up over his head to express his disgust. “That’s the problem,” he says. “You keep saying meditate, I keep hearing masturbate, and I’ll let you guess which one I’d rather be doing.”

Bucky sighs and then he’s suddenly standing over Clint, blocking out the sunlight and reaching out for him, tugging him up with one hand, like it’s easy. “C’mon,” he says, and then he’s dragging Clint back towards the cottage.

“Listen,” Clint says, going along willingly enough. “I’m all about the casual manhandling, it’s definitely a kink I didn’t realize I had until right now, but I’m also totally open to just laying here and watching you chop wood even if you’re wearing too many layers.”

“We’re going to meditate,” Bucky tells him, clearly exasperated. “I’m going to do it with you.”

Clint wrinkles his nose. “That sounds only moderately less terrible than doing it by myself,” he says. “Will you at least consider taking the sweater off? Doing it shirtless? Give me something to look at?”

“Your eyes are going to be closed,” Bucky tells him, and by now, he’s frog-marched Clint right back to the living room. Clint hadn’t bothered to turn off the tape, so now the serene woman is inviting him to imagine he’s standing in a brook, water running over his feet.

“Sit,” Bucky says, firm.

Clint’s collapsing to sit on his ass before the order registers and his inability to disobey a direct order from his alpha is going to get old really quickly.

Bucky sits across from him, much more graceful, and says, “Meditation is an important step to gainimg mastery over yourself. The sooner you learn to control your thoughts, the sooner you can learn to control your body.”

He closes his eyes, looking utterly relaxed, and Clint glares at him, sullen. “You know,” he says casually. “There are certain sexual practices that might do the same thing, and probably much more easily for me than meditation.”

“ _Clint_ ,” Bucky snaps, and Clint huffs but settles down more comfortably as Bucky rewinds the tape.

“I’m just saying,” he says. “There could even be orgasms involved and a lot of it would involve you telling me what to do, and you’re already real good at that.”

“Shut. Your. Mouth.”

Clint’s mouth slams shut and he goes very still, breath faltering a little bit and suddenly it’s even more difficult to sit still because something in the growl in Bucky’s voice is just doing something to him. Meditating was impossible before, when all Clint was thinking about was how shitty meditation was.

But now he’s remembering the way Bucky’s voice sounded while he fucked Clint’s mouth before the full moon and he can’t even breathe properly, nevermind sit still.

“Clint,” Bucky says, as he pushes play and settles back onto the floor. His voice is curt, rough. “Sit still or I’ll have to get the cuffs.”

“There’s no way you aren’t doing this on purpose,” Clint says, eyes popping open as he stares at Bucky, his cheeks feeling overly warm, his dick getting distractingly hard.

Bucky’s eyes are closed and he’s looking perfectly content and serene but there’s the slightest flush to his cheeks and Clint sighs, closing his eyes again and mirroring his position.

The woman on the cassette tells him to breathe and he does. And then he relaxes his body, one piece at a time, beginning at his feet and working his way up.

A bird sings outside.

Clint breathes and tries to focus.

He pictures a forest.

There’s another bird outside, and maybe a squirrel -- he can hear its heartbeat.

He breathes and pictures the forest. The trees. The path.

The wind picks up and rattles the shutters.

Clint grimaces and focuses but now there’s another sound, distant but coming closer -- a heartbeat, pounding so fast, but it’s a rhythm he doesn’t recognize -- what sort of creature is that? He tips his head and tries to catch its scent but it’s too far away and --

“It’s a fucking fox,” Bucky snaps and Clint’s eyes fly open, startled.

“Oh,” he says, unable to help shrinking away from the frustration he can clearly see on Bucky’s face. “Sorry, I was trying, I swear.”

Bucky closes his eyes and takes a calming breath and then turns off the cassette. “Okay,” he says, clearly straining for patience. “Maybe that wasn’t the best way.”

“I tried to tell you, I just --”

“Maybe you’ll listen better to me. C’mere.”

He holds out a hand and Clint hesitates, because he’s got a giant fucking boner, for one, and for another, he’s not all that sure what Bucky intends to do, but when Bucky lifts one eyebrow impatiently, Clint scrambles over and lets Bucky take him by the hand.

He gets manhandled until he’s sitting on his ass with Bucky at his back, his legs crossed and Bucky’s knees up on either side. Bucky tugs him, so Clint is resting against him, basically surrounded by him, and this is not doing anything for Clint’s unfortunately hard dick.

He licks his lips and says, “Is this some sexy throwback to yesterday, because if you’re trying to remind me of that, I gotta tell you, I haven’t forgotten, and --”

“Close your eyes,” Bucky says, and Clint can feel his voice rumbling in his chest behind him and it makes him shiver.

“If you want to shut me up, I think you know there’s a better way to do that --”

Bucky doesn’t tell him to shut his mouth again, this time he just covers it with his hand, and Clint snaps his jaw shut.

“Just listen,” Bucky says. “Do what I tell you. Okay?”

It sounds pretty reasonable when he says it like that, so Clint inhales shakily and then wills his body to relax, going limp against him.

“Good,” Bucky says, quiet. He’s so close, his voice low and soft, echoing in his chest, and it does so much to cut through all the noise and distractions, until it’s just about the only thing Clint’s focused on.

“Now close your eyes,” Bucky says, and it’s automatic; Clint’s eyes flutter shut. “Now breathe in… exhale. And again.”

He can feel Bucky’s breathing and it’s so easy to mirror it. Bucky doesn’t speak for a long time, but it’s warm and he’s surrounded by Bucky’s arms, his legs, and he feels safer than he’s felt in so long.

Bucky eventually brushes Clint’s hair back and lets his fingers trail down the side of his neck, to his shoulder, and Clint has the sudden hazy realization that he doesn’t know how much time has passed but his ass is going numb and his dick is still vaguely hard and Bucky’s still stroking him, gentle, rhythmic passes of his hand.

“Bucky?” Clint says, hazy, turning and nuzzling against his shoulder. “Are we almost done? ‘Cause I gotta pee.”

Bucky goes very still. “Are you -- did you fucking fall asleep?” he asks, stunned. “Are you _drooling_ on me?”

“I’m meditating,” Clint argues sleepily. “I did what you said.”

“Sleeping isn’t meditating!”

“Sleeping is better than meditating,” Clint says, sitting up and rubbing sleepily at his eyes. “Meditating is _exhausting_.”

“It’s supposed to be restful,” Bucky says. “You’re supposed to be learning to control yourself, working on your focus. It’ll help you retain your focus in wolf form, so you don’t spend the whole time trying to get yourself killed.”

Clint climbs to his feet and stretches, hands up behind his head, Bucky still sitting at his feet and -- huh. Clint blinks down at him and thinks about how pretty he looks down there and he’s still half hard so maybe these sorts of thoughts aren’t the best right now, so.

“You know what’s restful?” he says, and Bucky drags his gaze away from Clint’s frankly fantastic abs -- ditching his shirt earlier was the best plan -- and says, “Uh. What?”

“Lunch. Are you hungry?”

He wanders over to the kitchen, giving Bucky a chance to check out his ass, which he’s hoping he takes full advantage of, and then starts poking around in the cupboards.

Behind him, he hears Bucky get to his feet. “Lunch,” he echoes, sounding a little lost. “Clint, we need -- I can’t keep you safe if you don’t listen to me.”

“But I did listen,” Clint says, turning to look at him, leaning back against the counter. “I meditated, I did my best, it didn’t work. What should we try next?” He grins. “Maybe more cutting wood, you probably want to have a big stock of that for winter, right?”

“How would be cutting wood help you learn to control yourself?” Bucky asks, rolling his eyes and opening the fridge. He starts pulling out ingredients for what looks like an amazing sandwich, and if he wants to take over lunch, Clint is more than willing to let him.

“Well,” Clint says, pretending to think about it. “You look really hot doing it, so I’d think it would be really hard for me to stay in control and not shove you up against a tree so I could get my mouth on you, but I’d do my best.”

There’s the faintest tremble in Bucky’s hands and Clint’s grin just grows wider when he notices it. “That’s -- that wouldn’t be productive,” Bucky says. He shoots Clint a quick look. “And I’m not sure you’d manage it, even if you tried.”

“But even if I _failed_ , it would still be a win, right?” he asks, laughing and pushing himself up off the counter, wandering closer. He sees Bucky tense up and leans up against his back, looking over his shoulder at all the sandwich ingredients. “You didn’t seem to mind my mouth yesterday.”

Bucky keeps chopping a tomato, but Clint can see the tips of his ears slowly turning pink. “Yesterday was different,” he says, before pausing to clear his throat. “Can you get me the bread? It’s over there.”

He points to a cupboard conveniently all the way across the kitchen and Clint rolls his eyes with a fond smile as he steps away and goes to fetch it. Once he tosses to Bucky, he hops up to sit on the counter near where he’s working.

“You know what I think we need?” he says, swinging his feet. “A list. A _spreadsheet_. We’ll write up all our ideas for ways to help me learn control and go through them, systematically.”

Bucky finally looks at him, frowning. “You don’t seem like the spreadsheet type.”

“That’s an unfair assumption,” Clint tells him promptly, grinning. “It’s totally helpful to have everything listed somewhere I can see it so that when I get off task -- which happens sometimes -- I can just check the list and remember what I’m supposed to do. Nat leaves me lists all the time, and I usually manage to complete at least half the things she thinks I should do. It’s super helpful.”

Bucky still looks unsure, like he thinks Clint’s just fucking with him, but he nods slowly and points to a drawer. “Paper and pens in there.”

Clint sides off the counter and obediently fetches the pens and the paper, setting up at the table while Bucky finishes up two gigantic sandwiches.

“Have you ever had a dog?” Clint asks, while drawing a lopsided chart with one hand and cramming his sandwich into his mouth with the other.

Bucky’s still looking all suspicious around the edges. “No. Why?”

“Because I’ve got a dog, and let me tell you, meditation was not the way to teach him to be a good dog -- and he’s the best dog.”

Bucky’s picking at his sandwich, his eyes narrowed warily. “That’s irrelevant,” he says. “Because we are not dogs.”

“Close enough though, right?” He grins hopefully and Bucky still looks like he’s regretting all his life choices that brought him to this point, so Clint soldiers bravely on and says, “I’m just saying, I’m incredibly reward-motivated, so maybe having some sort of treat might make this easier for me.”

“I made you a sandwich,” Bucky says flatly. “What else do you want from me?”

“Sex,” Clint says automatically, and then he wrinkles his nose. He’d planned to be so much more subtle than that. 

“I already told you,” Bucky says, cheeks flushing. “That was -- it was the full moon, and all your instincts going out of control.”

“But the full moon’s over,” Clint says with a shrug, popping the last of his sandwich into his mouth triumphantly. “And I still want you to fuck me. So.”

“You’ve still got instincts,” Bucky tells him. “A bond. I told you.”

Tapping his fingers on the table and thinking, Clint says, “Well, what about you? You wanted me. And you’re in control. So maybe you and me wanting each other is separate from you and me being werewolf buddies.”

“I--” Bucky looks incredibly uncomfortable now, and Clint’s eyes narrows as he wishes being a werewolf came with psychic powers so he could figure out exactly what Bucky’s hang up is.

“Okay,” he says magnanimously, because teasing Bucky is one thing, but making him run away is another. “I’ll accept answers instead of sexual favours.”

“Answers?” Bucky asks warily.

“Yeah. You want to teach me focus and obedience, so whenever I do what you say, I get to ask you a question -- any question -- and you have to answer.”

Bucky still doesn’t look convinced. “You think that’ll work?”

“Yep!” He finishes up his spreadsheet -- the lines are crooked and he’s still got to fill it in with ideas, but he’s pretty proud of it. “Listen, it’s positive reinforcement. It totally works.”

“On dogs.”

“People too.” He carefully writes ‘meditation’ onto the first line and then crosses it out, and then adds ‘positive reinforcement’ below it. Then he glances up at Bucky through his lashes, licks his bottom lip, and says casually, “And listen. If it doesn’t work, we can always try punishment.”

Bucky’s eyes drop to his mouth and his eyes go a little dark and he says, “Punishment?”

“Uh huh.” Clint writes it on the next line. “You know. I’m a disobedient little shit, you teach me a lesson.”

“What kind of lesson?” Bucky asks, after clearing his throat.

Clint doesn’t smirk. But he really, really wants to. Instead, he says airily, “Oh, you know. Spanking’s a classic. Some light bondage, maybe? You do have those cuffs, right? Mouth-fucking’s a good one, but I really like that one, so I’m not sure it counts as punishment. Hell, I like all of them, so… Basically, use your imagination. But Bucky.” Bucky’s cheeks are pink and his eyes a little unfocused, and Clint leans across the table and says, as earnestly as he can, “You gotta know that whatever you want me to do, I’m gonna want to do it. You could tell me to do anything.”

“I tell you to shut your mouth all the time,” Bucky says roughly. “And you haven’t managed it.”

Clint sits back with a shit-eating grin and says, “Maybe I want you to make me.”

Bucky just stares at him like he can’t figure him out, so Clint does him a favour and goes back to his spreadsheet. He writes ‘demonstration’ on the next line, because he wants to see Bucky in wolf form when he’s not skulking around the woods. Under that, he writes ‘clicker training,’ because he watched a documentary on that once and wolves are basically dogs. He adds ‘pain and torture’ because it’s always a last resort, right?

“Okay,” Bucky says after a moment, grabbing the list. He reads over it, grabs a pen, crosses out ‘pain and torture’ but leaves clicker training, and then gets up, sticking it to the fridge with a magnet. “Maybe we should try more meditation first.”

Clint groans and lets his head sink to the table. 

Bucky hesitates and then says, “If you do what I say for the rest of the day, I’ll let you ask a question.”

“One question?” Clint gasps, staring at him. “A whole day of obedience for _one_ question?”

“Three,” Bucky says, looking uncomfortable.

Clint sighs and slumps sullenly in his chair and says, “Fine.”

They try to meditate. It’s just about as successful as the first attempt, and Bucky eventually gives up and makes Clint go for another epically long and stupid run to tire him out, like that’s going to lead to anything helpful.

It doesn’t even lead to sex this time. Just exhaustion and sweat and despair.

*

Bucky hands Clint a mug of hot coffee and he clutches it greedily, breathing in its sweet, sweet scent. Sure, it’s already dark outside and probably too late for caffeine, but Clint has earned this fucking coffee.

“Three questions,” Bucky says, wary, as he settles into the armchair, watching Clint inhale a burning mouthful of coffee. 

Clint brightens. “Because I did good?” he asks, though he obviously doesn’t care about Bucky’s approval.

“You tried your best,” Bucky says with an eye roll. “So ask your questions.”

Clint has _so_ many questions. He considers his options, studying Bucky, who is making a big show of casually turning the tv on, finding Jeopardy. Finally, Clint asks, “Did you and Steve ever fuck?”

Bucky drops the remote and then shoots Clint a glare when the batteries pop out and scatter across the floor. “That’s an irrelevant question,” he says, and Clint just makes himself comfortable on the couch, sipping his coffee.

“Maybe,” he allows. “But you didn’t put any rules on the questions, so. Now you gotta answer.”

Bucky closes his eyes with a long-suffering sigh and says, “No, Barton. I never fucked Steve.” And then he hesitates, grimaces, and says, “We jerked each other off once. When we were fourteen. On a dare.”

“Whose dare?” Clint asks, staring and trying to wrap his mind around the idea of a fourteen year old Steve Rogers jerking anybody off.

Bucky exhales carefully and says, “My sister’s. That was your second question, you have one more.”

“Not fair!” Clint cries, but Bucky looks pretty firm about it, so he scowls and considers his last question carefully. “When was the last time you got laid?”

“Seriously? That’s your question?”

Clint holds up both hands harmlessly, balancing his empty mug on his lap, and Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Yesterday,” he says, and Clint squawks. 

“I meant before that! That’s cheating!”

“Is it? Bucky asks mildly, unmuting jeopardy in a clear signal that the conversation is over.

Clint slumps in his chair and glares at him.

He’s gonna earn so many questions tomorrow, and Bucky’s gonna hate every one of them.

*

Despite the fact that Clint managed to bat his eyelashes and convince Bucky that they ought to sleep in the same bed because they already have and the couch is uncomfortable, Bucky is gone by the time Clint finally stumbles into wakefulness.

He can hear the distant sound of someone chopping wood, and the prospect of getting to watch Bucky do that some more is all it takes to send him tumbling out of bed.

Bucky left a mug of coffee on the bedside table and Clint scoops it with one hand as he hitches his sweats up with the other hand and hops down to the main floor. He spills all over himself, swipes at the puddle with the shirt he’d conveniently stripped off and left on the floor the night before, while using his abs and a convenient stretch to aid in coaxing Bucky to follow him up to bed.

When he gets outside, he’s only slightly disappointed to find that Bucky is chopping wood fully clothed. He still finds himself a comfortable-looking seat on a nearby tree stump in a sunspot and settles in to watch.

And then he sees his bow propped up against a tree and Clint forgets all about Bucky, his axe, the wood to be chopped, the coffee in his hands.

His _bow_.

There’s a sharp, painful sensation in his chest. He hadn’t even realized how much he missed it, how much he needed to feel it in his hands to give himself a sense of balance, until he sees it now.

Clint drains his lukewarm coffee, abandons his mug, and approaches the bow carefully, like he’s half worried it’ll disappear.

“You’ve had that this whole time?”

“You had it when I found you,” Bucky says, as he swings the axe, splitting another piece of wood. “Kept it safe.”

“Then why are you bringing it out now?”

Bucky tosses the split wood onto the pile he’s got going and comes over, brushing his hands off on his thighs, and says, “From what I know of you, when you’ve got that in your hands is just about the only time you’re ever focussed. I thought maybe it would help you learn to focus now.”

Clint picks it up gingerly and it fits in his hands just as it always has, even though his hands are different now -- stronger and sharper.

Something settles deep in his chest and he feels like he can breathe again.

“Most of the arrows were broken,” Bucky says, before picking up one that was lying next to the bow. “But I saved this one.”

Clint takes the bow and twirls it between his fingers and says, “I need a target.”

“What about that?” Bucky asks, jerking his chin, and Clint glances over his shoulder to see where he’s hung the guided meditation cassette from the low-hanging branch of a tree.

“Perfect,” Clint says, laughing as he nocks the arrow, draws and -- just before he goes to release, something shrieks.

The arrow flies wide, ends up buried in the wrong tree entirely, and Clint’s heart is pounding. He spins around towards wherever that scream had come from, the arrow and it’s target forgotten entirely.

“You missed,” Bucky says, sounding stunned.

Clint will care about missing his target when he’s not worried that there’s some sort of creature out there lurking in the wilderness. “What _was_ that?” he asks.

“It was a hawk,” Bucky says slowly, touching Clint’s shoulder, careful at first. Clint is so tense, he barely feels it, and it’s not until Bucky’s hand slides up to the back of his neck and squeezes that Clint gives into the touch and starts to relax.

“It probably found a rabbit,” Bucky says, voice low and soothing. “Look at me, okay?”

Clint does. He doesn’t understand what the big deal is. Anybody would have panicked if they’d heard a sound like that and didn’t recognize it. He’s proud of his archery, he knows he’s pretty much the best archer in the world, but missing a target while under threat of attack from screaming monsters is totally permissible.

Even Steve would’ve let him get away with that.

But Bucky’s studying his face like there’s something he’s missing here, and he says slowly, “The hawk was miles away, Clint. Hydra gave me your file -- they gave me all of your files -- and yours said you never miss. But you did.”

“Well, yeah,” Clint says, trying to shrug it off. He stalks over to the arrow, tugging it out of the tree. “Because I thought there was a monster. It’s not that big a deal. Look.” He nocks the arrow, draws, hits the target without even looking, and hears the cassette crack as the arrow slams through it. “Does that make you feel better?”

Bucky cocks his head, eyes narrow. “Werewolves have heightened senses,” he says, and yeah, Clint’s figured that out. “But your sight, your touch, your smell -- none of that’s affecting you. It’s just your hearing.”

“Yeah,” Clint says slowly, rolling his eyes. “Probably because my eyesights always been fucking fantastic, and I haven’t really had time to focus on smell or touch or whatever because I’m too busy trying to figure out what the fuck all these sounds are because I haven’t heard them since I was a kid? I mean, you try --”

“You were deaf,” Bucky says, sounding stunned. “I thought -- when I found you, you had aids in your ears but I thought they were comms devices.”

Clint shrugs, suddenly feeling defensive. “Yeah, I was. What, that wasn’t in your file?”

“No,” Bucky says, eyes wide. “It wasn’t.”

“Well, you try focusing when all of a sudden everything’s so much louder, and there are so many more layers to sound than you’ve ever heard before, and there are fucking hawks killing rabbits and you have to listen to their screams and --”

“Close your eyes,” Bucky says, and he’s suddenly very close again. Clint’s eyes shut and he opens his mouth to keep ranting, but then Bucky’s hands cradle both sides of his head, cupping his ears, pressing gently, and instantly muffling all of the overwhelming sounds Clint has been trying so hard to compartmentalize.

It’s instant and soothing and he feels a tension he’s been carrying in his shoulders and his chest relax as he settles into that familiar near-silence.

He exhales and his shoulders slump and Clint’s eyes prickle with grateful tears. He hadn’t even known how overwhelming all the sounds had been until Bucky blocked them out.

Bucky shifts his grip, moving to cradle Clint’s jaw in both hands, and says, “Why didn’t you tell me? I thought you had the attention span of a squirrel.”

“I do,” Clint says, because he’s already getting distracted -- Bucky’s so close, and his mouth is _right there_ and this is intimate in a way that makes him think they could be or should be kissing instead to the same effect. “The hearing thing just made it worse.”

He leans closer, eyes fluttering shut again, because it’s going to happen, they’re going to kiss, they’re --

Bucky steps back and says, “That makes so much more sense. No wonder you couldn’t focus.”

“Hey, wait,” Clint says, unable to help sounding a little sullen. “You can’t -- you were going to kiss me.”

“Kiss you?” Bucky asks, laughing. “You haven’t earned that.”

It sucks, on one hand. But on the other, Clint realizes, brightening up. That means kisses are something he can earn.

*

A short while later, Bucky says, “I’ve got to head into town for some supplies. Do I -- I don’t have to tie you up, do I?”

Clint’s entire face lights up, he can feel the beaming grin. He doesn’t _mind_ the cottage. It’s nice, and bugging Bucky is definitely a decent way to pass the time, and they watch Jeopardy every night and that’s cool, but Clint is so excited about the idea of a change of scenery.

“Dude, okay, if you don’t take me with you, you will absolutely need to chain me up because I’ll follow you anyway,” Clint says, and before Bucky can reply, he adds, “So please, please take me with you, I swear, I won’t eat any of the locals.”

“You have absolutely no control over your wolf,” Bucky reminds him, looking wary but not entirely against the idea. 

“Yeah, but you’ve said a billion times that you can control me, and it’s a town, not a Hydra facility. People probably won’t shoot at me, so I probably won’t get freaked out and transform and eat anybody, and even if I do get freaked out and transform, I’m pretty sure you can keep me from eating anybody who doesn’t deserve to be eaten and listen, okay, Bucky, just listen. I’ve been here for so long. I’m going nuts. Please, please take me to town -- oh god, do they have pizza, Bucky? Is that a thing? I would sell my kidney for pizza.”

He expects more resistance, expects Bucky to dig out the cuffs and tie him up and say some bullshit about it being for his own good. Instead Bucky just says, “It’s a long walk.”

“Even better,” Clint says.

Bucky just rolls his eyes and says, “You better not bitch the whole way.”

*

‘Town’ is apparently a cluster of houses on the edge of the forest, with a Main Street that has, thank fucking god, a coffee shop, as well as a few other stores.

It was a long walk and Clint is tired and he needs a rest and some goddamn caffeine, so his feet instinctively take him straight towards the coffee shop.

Bucky pulls out some money, hands it to him, and says, “Get some coffee and wait for me. I’ve got a few things to pick up.”

Clint doesn’t care about anything except sitting down and savouring some delicious, delicious coffee, so he waves distractedly as Bucky takes off down the street.

A few minutes later, he’s settled in to a small table in the back corner of the coffee shop, about to take his first sip, when someone slips into the seat across from him.

Clint stares, coffee all but forgotten in his hands. “Nat,” he says, barely able to breathe. “What are you -- how are you --”

“Nice to see you too,” she says dryly, looking at him over her dark sunglasses as she sips her own latte.

Clint panics, letting go of his mug and looking around wildly. “You can’t be here,” he hisses. “You need to go, you need--”

“Relax,” she says. “Barnes is at the hardware store. We’ve got time.”

A tiny bit of tension bleeds out of him. “He can’t know you’re here,” he tells her. “How are you even here? How long have you been here?”

She rolls her eyes. “You really think I was going to leave you on your own for this long without checking in?”

“You said you would! I asked for time! I asked you to _trust_ me!”

She takes a sip. “I do trust you,” she says. “But I also know you.”

“Nat. Listen. Listen, you have to go. You have to -- oh shit, Natasha, he’s gonna know something’s wrong, he’s going to _hear_ it.”

“He’s down the street,” she says with a frown. “We have time.”

“How do you know? Oh god, is someone _watching him_ , please don’t tell me it’s Steve, oh shit, he will absolutely lose his shit if it’s Steve.”

“It’s not Steve,” she says, one eyebrow raised. “Now why don’t you tell me why you’ve decided to shack up with the Winter Soldier in the middle of the woods.”

“I didn’t specifically decide -- I’ve been -- I was hurt.” He’s scrambling desperately for a cover story. “I was hurt and needed to recover.”

“You look fine to me.”

“I know, but the -- the damage was. I’m still working on getting over it. I just need more time, okay? I swear to god I will call you when I’m ready to go home, you know I will, I just -- you need to trust me.”

She studies his face carefully, quiet for a long moment, before saying, “You need to promise me you’re not here against your will. If you are -- if he’s got something on you -- just let me know and I’ll take care of it.”

The longer she stays, the faster Clint’s heart beats. He’s going to have a panic attack -- oh, fuck, he’s going to panic and he’s going to turn into a wolf and he’s going to eat her, oh shit, oh fuck.

Clint closes his hands into fists because he’s pretty sure his nails have grown into claws, and when he hisses, “Natasha, you gotta go,” he has a lisp because his teeth are sharpening into fangs.

Her eyes narrow. “There were rumours about what exactly Hydra did to him to make the Winter Soldier faster, stronger, almost impossible to kill.”

“And any other time, I’d love to hear them, but you need to go. _Please_.”

“Breathe,” she tells him, and he sucks in a ragged breath because obeying Natasha has always been second nature. “He’s on his way.” She slides a phone across the table. “Call me if you need me,” she says. “I’ll be nearby. And when you’re ready, we’ll be here to take you home. Both of you.”

“Go,” he begs, clutching the phone and there’s no way she didn’t see his claws but she doesn’t comment, just leans across the table, presses a kiss to his cheek, and then she’s gone.

Clint rubs frantically at his cheek because it would be just like her to leave fucking lipstick on him, and two minutes later, when the door flies open and Bucky stalks into the quaint coffee shop, Clint’s pretty sure he’s got it all off.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asks, scanning the coffee shop suspiciously. 

He’s already shoved the phone into his pocket where hopefully, Bucky won’t find it, so Clint does his best to flash a winning smile and wrap his hands around his mug of coffee and say, “Nothing, how was your shopping trip, I’m good. Pretty strong coffee, gave me a caffeine rush.” He gulps some coffee to give himself plausible deniability.

Bucky’s eyes narrow on his hands and Clint risks a quick look and yep. Claws. Fuck.

“We have to go,” Bucky says, and Clint agrees, so he scrambles up out of his seat and out of the coffee shop, walking as fast as he can without running and drawing attention to himself.

As soon as they clear the edge of town and are back in the forest, Bucky drops his bags and grabs Clint by the shoulder, spinning him and pushing him up against a tree. He braces both hands on Clint’s shoulder, pins him with his entire body, and studies Clint’s face for a long moment.

The rush of touch sensation is grounding, calming, and Clint wonders if Bucky’s doing it on purpose.

“What happened?” he asks, quiet and firm and Clint opens his mouth to answer with some lie about caffeine and seeing a spider -- ha, a Black Widow, maybe -- and being startled, but he’s still panting for breath and trying to catch his balance and even with Bucky’s entire body offering him a grounding presence, it’s still too much. It’s too loud, there’s too much to see, there are too many scents, he’s overwhelmed and he’s still struggling to get his heart under control. His body ripples with the urge to change, to fly into flight or fight, to fall into his wolf form, and he shudders, slamming his head back against the tree trunk like pain will help. It doesn’t help.

“Hey,” Bucky says, low and soft and soothing. “Breathe. It’s fine. Whatever it was, it’s fine. You’re fine. I’ve got you. Close your eyes.”

He does, and Bucky cradles his jaw for a moment, brushing thumbs against his cheeks before sliding both hands up and covering his ears.

Instantly, all sounds are muffled except for the pounding of his own heart, and Clint manages to draw a long, soothing breath. He relaxes by slow increments against the tree, against Bucky, and he feels his heart rate slowing down, his teeth shifting back to blunt and human.

He feels drugged out and sleepy when Bucky finally shifts, moving his hands away from his ears, and he doesn’t open his eyes until Bucky says, soft, “There you go. You’ve got it.”

“Sorry,” Clint mumbles, and Bucky just shakes his head, stepping back but being sure to keep his hands on Clint to help keep him steady.

“You’re fine. You shouldn’t have come -- it was a lot, the people and the noise. But you’re okay. You stayed in control.”

“Because of you,” Clint says, letting out all his breath in a rush. “I wouldn’t have -- if you hadn’t --” would he really have hurt Natasha?

“Hey,” Bucky says, and Clint’s only got half a second to realize that he’s talking himself right back into a panic attack before Bucky’s cradling his jaw again and leaning up to kiss him.

It’s a hard kiss, distracting in all the best ways, and Clint’s giving into it before he even has a chance to think about it -- melting into Bucky again and grabbing for his shoulders for balance and licking his way back into Bucky’s mouth with an embarrassing and hungry noise catching in his throat. 

He’s still not breathing properly but now it’s got everything to do with Bucky’s mouth and his teeth and his tongue and nothing to do with anxiety at all, and when Bucky finally lets him breathe, Clint is panting.

“What was that for?” he asks, voice wrecked as he instinctively nuzzles against Bucky’s temple, still clinging to his shoulders.

“Thought you earned it,” Bucky says, and he sounds just as affected. His hands are shaking where they’re tangled up in Clint’s sweater.

Clint swallows back a rush of guilt because Bucky’s got no idea that Natasha found them, that she probably knows what they are, that she gave Clint a contraband phone that he’s hiding in his pocket even now. He wonders if he should confess, but he stays quiet, just breathing and running his fingers through Bucky’s hair.

He just needs a little more time.

*

They get back to the cottage and Bucky is still watching Clint, clearly concerned, despite the many ways Clint tries to shrug it off. He’s anxious though. It feels like someone watches them the whole way home, and he knows Natasha isn’t that sloppy and that she wouldn’t need to follow them home because she clearly already knows where they live, but he can’t shake the feeling off.

When they get home, Bucky stashes whatever he bought in a cupboard and while he does, Clint shoves his secret phone in a drawer he’s never seen Bucky open.

And then they watch Jeopardy.

Clint is tired. It’s been such a long fucking day, and he just wants to sleep. Instead, he sits there, curled up by himself and breathing and absently spinning the arrow Bucky gave him between his fingers.

“Hey,” he says finally, and Bucky turns to look at him like he’s just been waiting for Clint to say something. “Remember when I hit you with a brick and escaped that time?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry about that. That was a dick move and it must have really hurt. I’m surprised you ever learned to trust me after that -- and you did, right? Learn to trust me?”

“I healed,” Bucky says, slowly, eyes narrow. “And that’s what pack does. They trust each other. You were afraid and you didn’t understand what was happening. Of course you tried to leave. But you wouldn’t try to leave now, right?”

“Not without you,” Clint says, and he sees Bucky relax a little, his suspicions slowly bleeding out of the lines of his shoulders.

“We’ll figure it out,” Bucky tells him, reaching out to rest a hand on his thigh, just above his knee. Clint stares at his hand and tries to breathe through his lingering anxiety. “I’ve got some ideas we can try tomorrow.”

Clint swallows hard. “I’m still convinced that the best way would be sex,” he says, voice a little breathy, and Bucky just laughs.

*

The next morning, after breakfast, Bucky piles all the dirty dishes in the sink and then says casually, over his shoulder, “So, I was thinking I might tie you up.”

Clint drops his coffee mug and it cracks in half on the floor, half a cup of precious coffee spilling out.

“Fuck,” he says belatedly, stunned. He clears his throat. “I need, uh, a minute. And a mop.”

Bucky turns, leans a hip against the counter as he dries his hands. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh. “Why don’t you go get comfortable, and I’ll take care of that?”

“Yes, right, okay,” Clint says, backing away from the kitchen, from the mess, from Bucky. “Comfortable. That’s what I should do.”

He nearly trips and falls to his death on his way upstairs, which would really suck, and Bucky seems to take his time, giving Clint the opportunity to pace around the small loft, mumble to himself a whole lot about how he needs to calm the fuck down, and take his shirt off and put it back on three times.

How comfortable is he supposed to get.

Bucky laughs at him when he finally comes upstairs to find Clint with his shirt tangled up around his head, arms trapped, struggling to get back into it.

“Just take it off,” he says. “You’re stinking up the whole house with your indecision.”

“Well, it’s not my fault,” Clint huffs, struggling out of the shirt and dropping it to the floor. “I’m not sure how comfortable you want me.”

Bucky shoots him an amused look and then starts taking things out of one of the bags he’d brought home the day before, tossing them on the bed. “It’s going to take a few hours,” he says. “So as comfortable as you need to be.”

“Should I take off my _pants_?” Clint’s voice is embarrassingly high-pitched and Bucky laughs.

“If you want.”

He does.

When he stripped down to his underwear, Bucky jerks his head at the bed and says, “Lay down on your back.”

“This is like -- I don’t want to push my luck here, but this is for sex, right?” Clint says, scrambling onto the bed and flopping down on his back. “It’s not some stupid meditation trick, is it?”

He thinks maybe things are going his way a moment later when Bucky shifts, moving to kneel on the bed, straddling his thighs.

“Hold still,” he says, before gently taking one of his wrists and tugging it up above his head. He loops a piece of the soft rope around the headboard, anchoring it with a simple knot, before carefully wrapping it around Clint’s wrist and securing it.

“Bucky,” Clint says, a little breathy. He shifts underneath him, feels Bucky’s thighs on either side of his hips. “If this isn’t step one of your plan to fuck me, then you’re being an asshole. And a tease.”

Bucky sits back, grinning down at him, and says, “You have to master your body, Clint.” He takes his other hand, tugging it up over his head.

“Or you could just.” Clint shrugs as best he can. “Master it for me?”

Bucky laughs softly and ties a careful knot around his other wrist.

“Tug it,” he says, watching critically as Clint does. “It should hold, shouldn’t cut off circulation, and if you really wanted, you should be able to break it.” Then he sits back, studying Clint for a moment, stretched out beneath him. The amusement is gone and he looks serious, biting his bottom lip, thinking. 

“I need you to trust me,” he says.

“I just let you tie me mostly-naked to your bed without even a promise of sex,” Clint tells him. He’s wishing he kept his pants on. Underwear does very little to hide how turned on he’s getting.

He’s okay with it, though. He’s pretty sure no one in the world could lay back and let Bucky Barnes tie them to his bed without getting at least a little hard. Or wet. Or both.

He shifts against the ropes and it means he’s also shifting against Bucky’s thighs and it’s getting a bit hard to focus.

“I’m trying to take away the distractions,” Bucky tells him, which is ironic because he’s fucking sitting on Clint’s hips. He _is_ the distraction. “You need to focus, you need to be still. Can you be still for me?”

Clint twists his hands against the ropes and says, “Jesus, Buck, I’ll do just about anything you want me to.”

“Then trust me,” Bucky says. “Okay?”

Clint nods wildly and swallows hard and lets out a tense breath, trying to roll the tension out of his shoulders. They’re already starting to ache.

“I’m going to make it harder for you to hear,” Bucky tells him, gentle. Clint’s eyes go wide and he swallows back a nervous, frightened sound. He’s not sure he trusts anybody enough for that. “And I’m going to put a blindfold on you. I’m hoping it’ll help you focus on what you can feel. Maybe without all those external distractions happening, you can calm your thoughts and find your wolf. The sooner you can find it, the sooner we can work on controlling it. Okay?”

Clint licks his lips and says, “What if I can’t? What if I panic? What if I freak out and start to shift and I can’t because I’m tied here? What if--”

“I won’t be far,” Bucky promises. “I won’t leave the cottage. I’ll hear your heartbeat the whole time, and I’ll be right here. And if you do start to shift, the ropes won’t hold you. It’s why we’re not using the cuffs. Okay? I’ll take care of you. Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Clint says, but he sounds shaken. He breathes carefully. “I’ll try.”

Bucky smiles down at him fondly. “Maybe if you try your best, we can talk about all the things you’d rather be doing in this position.”

Clint laughs, some of his nervousness bleeding away. “D’you mean talk about it, or actually do it? Because my level of commitment to trying this depends entirely on your answer.”

“Just do your best and we’ll figure it out,” Bucky tells him. “Are you ready?”

“Wait, just -- what does it feel like? Your wolf. What am I supposed to be feeling?” 

Bucky considers for a moment and then presses one hand to his chest and says, “For me, it’s a feeling, just here. I always feel it -- it’s like breathing. It’s part of me. I’m not afraid of it. It’s just an energy -- feral and animalistic. Transforming into a wolf is easy for me, like exhaling. You just need to find that.” He hesitates and then adds, “I can show you. Do you want me to? I can force you to feel it.”

Clint remembers that night, before the full moon, the flash of red eyes outside the cottage, and his body’s instinctive reaction to it, the shift he’d barely kept in check. He takes a deep breath and says, “Yeah. Show me.”

Bucky’s eyes flash red and Clint’s reaction is instant. It’s deep in his bones, an echoing sensation, a loss of control, an animalistic energy rushing over him and he arches into it, gasping at the pain as his bones start to vibrate with the change.

“Shh,” Bucky says, cradling his jaw. “Shh, stay with me, Clint. I’ve got you.”  
“Fuck,” Clint says, panting. “I’m supposed to -- I’m supposed to feel that on purpose?”

“It’s different, when you’re in control of it,” Bucky says, smoothing his hair back. “Do you still want to do this? Maybe we should wait.”

Clint isn’t sure he’s got the time to wait, not with Natasha lurking, and also. Well. He’d be willing to try scarier things for the chance to talk about doing this again, but with, like. Sex.

“I’m okay,” he says, flexing his fingers and willing his body to relax. “Promise.”

Bucky studies him for a long moment and then nods. “I won’t leave you here for too long. An hour, max. Okay? Call for me if you need me.”

Clint nods and says solemnly, “My safeword is avocado.”

“I’ll remember that,” Bucky tells him with a small smile. Then he’s got a silk scarf, carefully folded, and says, “Close your eyes.”

Clint does, holding his breath while Bucky carefully ties the blindfold on, and then Bucky says, “Try to stay still. To focus. And Clint…” His thumb brushes over Clint’s bottom lip. “If you can’t keep your mouth shut, I’m going to have to make you.”

Clint laughs shakily. “Okay, okay,” he says. “So I shouldn’t take this opportunity to tell you exactly all the dirty things I want you to do to me next time you tie me up?”

“You can,” Bucky says, and when Clint can’t see him, his voice sounds louder, more layered. It echoes in Clint’s chest. “But then I’m gonna have to gag you.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Clint says, and then Bucky’s shifting, moving off his hips, and Clint can’t help a spike of anxiety. “Wait,” he says, because he feels like if Bucky moves, he’ll lose his anchor, without the ability to move or see. He feels Bucky hesitate, still touching him, and says, “Can you just -- where do you feel it? Your wolf. Where…”

“Here,” Bucky says, pressing a warm palm to Clint’s bare chest. “You’re doing okay?”

Clint exhales and says, “Yeah. Okay. Don’t go far, okay?”

“I’ll be right here.”

“Okay.”

Bucky climbs off him, pulls his hand away, but Clint can still feel the warm place in his chest, where his hand had been. “Ready?” Bucky asks, soft. Clint nods, and he says, “You’re doing great, Clint. I’ll be right here.”

And then he slips noise cancelling headphones over Clint’s ears, cutting off the layers of sound that Clint had still been struggling to get used to. The crickets are gone, the breeze in the trees and against the eaves, the distant heartbeats of prey animals in the bush. Bucky’s breathing, his heartbeat. Clint’s own breathing.

Everything is silent and dark.

At first, it’s okay. Clint is breathing and sure, he can’t hear it, but the sensation of air flowing in and out of his lungs keeps him grounded and focused.

He swallows and he shifts his shoulders and he feels the sheet under them. He becomes super aware of his nose, of the varied scents he catches whenever he inhales, breathing Bucky and that morning’s pancakes and the coffee he’d spilled on the floor.

He feels his pulse pounding in his throat, in his fingertips, wonders if he can feel his own heart beating or if it’s his imagination. He hums in the back of his throat and the vibration without sound sends goosebumps racing up his arms.

He takes a mental inventory of his body -- focusing on each part, from his toes to his shins to his hips, and higher.

He spends a moment thinking about whether or not he can feel the specific tip of his nose.

And then he goes back to focusing on his breathing.

He wonders how much time has passed.

He wiggles his toes.

He shifts his legs, pulling one knee up, feeling the sheet under his foot, imagining what it might sound like, wondering when he got so used to hearing layers of sound like that. He hasn’t been a werewolf very long.

He thinks about the first time he shifted. He flinches, remembering the frantic mess of terror, the blood in his throat, the screams.

He swallows and licks his lips and thinks about other things -- like the sound of the wind in the trees, like the flash of Bucky’s red eyes, like Natasha.

Aw, fuck, he does not want to think about Natasha.

He thinks about Lucky instead. Lucky is safe and secure, a sweet thing to think about, and then he wonders if Lucky would know what Clint is now, and if he would be afraid.

He squeezes his eyes tightly shut against the blindfold and thinks about wolves.

He thinks about those howls he heard that very first night, when he was running from Hydra. He wonders if Bucky howls when he’s a wolf. He wonders if Bucky likes to play fetch when he’s a wolf, like Lucky does. He wonders if Bucky would kill him for asking.

He thinks about taking Bucky back to New York, of presenting him to Steve at the Tower, all, “Don’t worry, Rogers, I found your boy.”

He wonders if Bucky was ever actually Steve’s boy. He wonders if Bucky ever wanted to be. He wonders what would have happened if Clint had never been bitten that night, if Bucky hadn’t found him. Would anyone ever have found Bucky?

He wonders if he’ll ever get Bucky back to New York. He wonders if Bucky would even want to stick around with him if it wasn’t for his pack bond or whatever. He wonders if Bucky would’ve chosen someone who was such a disaster for his pack if he’d had a choice. He wonders if Bucky would’ve prefered Steve.

He takes a deep breath and he tries to focus. He needs to find his wolf. He needs to find the place inside his chest filled with feral energy.

All he feels, though, is a distant ache, a heavy sensation, that feels a little like heartbreak.

So he does what Clint does best and opens his mouth.

“Hey, uh, Bucky? I’ve been thinking about how much you’re gonna owe me for this, and I don’t think you tying me down and fucking me -- even nice and slow -- is gonna do it. I think you’re gonna have to let me tie you down and ride you.”

He pauses, straining to hear any sort of reaction. There’s nothing. He keeps going, though he can’t tell how loud he’s being, and it’s an uncomfortable throwback to basically his entire adolescence.

“I mean, I’ve thought about it, you know,” he says, shifting restlessly against the ropes. “You tied down, stretched out, begging me -- you think you’d do that? Maybe if I wrecked you with my mouth for long enough. Licked my way inside you. Would you like that? I mean, I’d ask you real prettily before I did it, don’t worry. It’s just. You taste so good, Bucky. Did I tell you that before? I’d get you so hard and then I’d just -- I’d get myself ready for you while you watched and I’d j-just fuck myself on you. You’re so big, Bucky, I just want to --”

Bucky’s there suddenly -- pressing a hot, dirty kiss against his mouth, dragging his teeth against Clint’s lower lip, biting down hard until Clint’s words fade into a strangled moan, and just as quickly, Bucky’s gone. Clint goes very still, his heart pounding, straining for any indication of where Bucky’s gone, what he’s going to do next, if Bucky can see how every obviously hard Clint is.

He can probably see.

When Bucky’s hand falls heavily to Clint’s hip and then drags slowly up to his shoulder, Clint can’t help arching into it with a breathy moan.

This is fucking so much better than being alone with his own goddamn thoughts.

“B-Bucky,” he pants, because he needs more than a hand on his shoulder.

And then he feels Bucky just barely brush his lips against his temple before tugging the headphones off one ear.

“Open your mouth for me,” Bucky says roughly, his voice warm and fond, and Clint shivers and obeys immediately. “Now bite down, sweetheart.”

He does. It’s a fucking gag.

Clint’s squawk of outrage is muffled against the fabric in his mouth, and he growls as Bucky carefully ties it.

“Twenty minutes. Can you do that for me?” Bucky asks, bumping his nose against Clint’s jaw. 

Clint growls again but ducks his head in a nod and Bucky says, “You’re doing so good, I’m right here, I won’t go anywhere. I promise.”

He keeps a hand right on Clint’s chest -- right where he’d said he felt his own wolf, and it helps Clint focus the way nothing else had, his tension slowly bleeding out of him.

Time moves slowly, and every exhale, more and more of Clint is focused on that single point of contact, until everything else just fades away.

The less of the outside world he focuses on, the more he can feel his own chest -- his own heart beating. And there, echoing along his heartbeat, is another sort of energy, one that’s unfamiliar and strange. The longer he pays attention to it, the stronger it gets, until he begins to feel its frequency vibrating in his bones, an ache that is suddenly altogether too familiar.

It’s the same feeling he gets before his body shakes itself apart and into another form and it’s _terrifying_.

He tries to jerk away from the touch that’s grounding him there and he can’t -- he can’t get away, he can’t get away from that vibration, from that rage, and he’s afraid and he starts to struggle.

Clint sucks in a painful breath through his nose and it feels like the gag is choking him, and he starts thrashing against the ropes, twisting away from the painful, burning sensation in his chest.

The gag is gone in an instant, torn away so he can breath in heaving, painful gasps, and then the headphones are gone and he can hear Bucky’s voice, calm and firm and telling him to breathe.

“I’ve got you,” Bucky says, sounding competent and sure as he gently pulls the blindfold off. “You’re fine, I’ve got you, just give me a minute. It’s fine, Clint. You’re good.”

The light is blinding and Clint flinches away from it, chest still heaving as he struggles with the anxiety, the fear, the feeling that he’s being suffocated. As soon as the ropes go slack around his wrists, he shoves himself up and against Bucky’s chest, clinging and shuddering.

“Shh,” Bucky says, arranging him so that Clint’s across his lap, wrapped up in a blanket. He’s still shivering, Clint can’t seem to stop, even as Bucky settles back against the headboard and holds him, stroking one hand down his back, nuzzling his temple, and keeping up a steady stream of soothing reassurances.

“Avocado,” Clint mumbles when his breathing levels out enough to speak. He rolls his forehead against Bucky’s shoulder, tucking his head beneath Bucky’s chin.

Bucky laughs softly, tightening his hold. “Yeah,” he says, quiet. “I got that. You did so good.”

“I fucked it up,” Clint reminds him, exhaustion stealing over him slowly, starting at his fingertips and his toes. “I got scared.”

“It’s a scary thing. But you trusted me and you tried your best,” Bucky hums, tucking the blanket more tightly up around his shoulders. “And you started to change. Your fingers were turning to claws.”

“I think I found it,” Clint confesses, shuddering. “But it was too much. Too scary. It was going to hurt.”

“I know you might not believe me,” Bucky tells him, soft. “But if you don’t fight it -- if you’re not afraid of it -- the pain is so much less.”

Clint snorts and snuggles closer and says, “You owe me so many questions.”

“Questions?” Bucky asks, smoothing a hand down his arm. “I thought you were gonna demand sex.”

“Well. Yeah.” Clint blinks sleepily as he considers that. His body feels like shit -- he’s tired and achy and fear has left a bitter taste in his throat. But he’s pretty sure he can get it up for Bucky, with proper incentive. “If you want, I mean. But if you’re not into it, we could do questions.”

Bucky’s quiet for a long moment, one hand bracing Clint against his chest, the other tracing soothing designs on his arm and his shoulder. Finally, he says, “You’ve got no idea what you looked like, practically naked and stretched out for me, trusting me to keep you still. Running your mouth.”

Clint can’t help a small, exhausted smile. “I wasn’t sure you were interested,” he says. “Mostly because of the lack of sex.”

“I told you. The wolf hormones and instincts --”

“I’d have wanted you without them,” Clint says simply, with a little shrug.

Bucky goes quiet again and then says, reluctantly, “But since the full moon, you haven’t been all that touchy? Which is proof that you--”

Clint lifts his head, eyes narrow. “Which is proof that I’m respecting your boundaries like a motherfucking adult,” he growls. “You made it pretty clear that you were uncomfortable with it, and I wasn’t gonna climb you like a tree when you were being _shy_ , I’m not an asshole, but I already told you, you want me, I’m yours. And I want you anyway I can get you.”

Bucky’s cheeks are pink and he licks his lips and looks like he’d rather be anywhere than here having this conversation, so Clint can’t help but feel a rush of affection when, instead of tossing Clint and running, Bucky says, “I know you wouldn’t have chosen this, with me --”

“You’re missing the point of ‘anyway I can get you,’” Clint says, but it’s so close to the thoughts he’d been having before, wondering if Bucky would’ve picked Clint for his pack if he’d had a choice, and Clint shies away from it. He nuzzles back under Bucky’s chin and closes his eyes and says, “Except maybe later, because I’m real tired.”

He feels Bucky slowly, carefully relax against him, stroking his hair. Finally, Bucky says softly, “S’okay. We don’t have any lube and we’re gonna need it for all the things I wanna do with you.”

Clint huffs a surprised laugh against his throat and says, “There’s Crisco in the kitchen, I saw it. It’ll work. And it’s vegan.”

Bucky makes an indignant noise and Clint feels it echo where his ear is pressed against his chest. “And what if we want to make pie?” he asks, clearly offended. 

Clint snickers, rubbing his nose against Bucky’s sweater, and smothers a yawn. “Sure, we’ll do that,” he mumbles sleepily. “Use up all the crisco for pie instead of sex, because we have priorities.”

Bucky hums in agreement and then it’s too much -- the heavy exhaustion, the hair petting. Clint falls asleep.

*

“I’m going to run you a bath,” Bucky says, and he’s been hovering since Clint dragged himself out of bed, feeling hungover, and collapsed on the couch, still wrapped in blankets.

Clint manages to muster up a bit of interest. “With bubbles?”

Bucky rolls his eyes fondly. “Sure. It’ll probably help. You relax, I’ll make dinner, then you can ask your questions. You earned them.”

“Or have all the sex,” Clint reminds him.

Bucky laughs. “Or that. C’mon, up.”

Clint lets Bucky drag him to the bathroom, leans against the counter listlessly as Bucky fills the large tub with steaming hot water, dumping in a bunch of body wash that makes pretty shitty bubbles, but Clint’s not going to complain.

“It’s hot,” Bucky cautioned as Clint lets his blanket fall, shimmies out of his underwear, and steps in.

Instantly, he is fully on board with this idea. The heat wraps around him, gently coaxes feeling back into the fingers and toes that have been cold and numb since his panic attack. He sinks into the water until it’s up to his nose, lapping along his cheekbones and sucking at the ends of his hair, and Bucky looks quietly satisfied.

“Just rest,” he says. “Call if you need anything.”

He closes the door on his way out.

Clint floats and the water gradually cools from ‘burning hot’ to ‘comfortably warm.’ He feels weightless, unattached, drifting, both physically, and in his mind. It reminds him a little of what being tied down had felt like -- sounds are muffled as his ears are below the waterline, his eyes are closed, everything is distant yet hyper focussed.

It’s nice. It’s just what he needs. Bucky’s the best at taking care of him, Clint hazily decides.

He wonders how many people fall asleep and drown in bathtubs every year, and then he wonders if werewolves can drown.

And then he absently drifts to that place in his chest where his wolf energy is, and this time -- soft and warm and safe and floating far from anything -- he isn’t afraid, and his wolf is just as soft, just as sleepy.

The energy doesn’t crash over him, doesn’t rush at him. Doesn’t scare him.

It just drifts, the way Clint is drifting.

It feels like any other part of him, a living, breathing piece of him, one that, when he lets it, gets to its feet and stretches like an animal roused from slumber and just…

Steps forward.

His bones don’t crack and reform. His spine doesn’t break and fuse together again. It’s like Clint just takes a deep breath and sinks beneath the surface and when he comes back up for air, he’s just. Not human anymore.

Wolves are not great at floating on their backs.

He sinks and he panics and thrashes against the water that’s sucking at his fur and dragging him deeper. He scrambles for purchase against the ceramic tub and, when he finally gets to his feet -- there are four of them.

And half the water has sloshed out onto the floor.

And.

And he’s a fucking wolf.

It was so easy -- like inhaling -- that it takes an embarrassingly long time for him to accept that somehow, accidentally, he’s stumbled into his wolf form, not sent there by the moon, or a panic attack, or fear. 

He doesn’t know what to do now, so he stands there for a moment, taking mental stock.

He’s Clint, mostly, in his mind. There are other instincts, ones which had been muffled before, which are now at the forefront -- instincts to run, to chase, to hunt. To howl. But unlike before, his human consciousness is still there, still prevalent, still able to sit back and think, “What the actual fuck.”

He wags his tail.

Clint decides that the first order of business is to get out of the tub, but four feet are much harder to navigate than two, and he ends up slipping down the side of the tub, flipping onto his side, and having to scramble back to his feet, once again dripping and covered with soap suds.

“Clint?” Bucky calls, probably concerned by the clear fucking flooding happening in his bathroom.

Clint doesn’t answer -- he tries, but his muzzle just opens and he huffs a little and it’s not a human sound at all.

Getting out of the tub is not graceful but he does manage it, with another spectacular rush of water, and then he’s -- well. He’s still a wolf. But he’s standing on four paws and he’s not in danger of drowning, so he’ll take it.

He wags his tail again, careful.

He’s got to find Bucky -- Bucky is going to be so fucking proud of him, Clint cannot wait to find him, and then maybe ask him how the fuck to change back.

He takes a careful step forward, manages not to trip over his extra paws, and then blinks up at the door because it’s closed and he’s a wolf and he’s got no idea how to open it.

He does try his best -- standing up on his hind legs and pawing at the doorknob as best he can but it doesn’t work -- of course it doesn’t fucking work -- and he leaves long gouges in the wood.

So he sits back on his haunches and opens his mouth again and gives into that one instinct that’s almost impossible to ignore.

He throws his head back and he howls.

It takes Bucky about three seconds to get from wherever he is in the cottage to the bathroom door, throwing it open and staring.

Clint stares back, feeling probably just about as pathetic as he looks. His fur is dripping all over the place.

“Clint?” Bucky asks, cocking his head, uncertain, and if Bucky’s worried that other werewolves are gonna somehow infiltrate their home without him knowing, then Clint’s gonna have to have words with him about his security systems.

The longer he stays in wolf form, the more he instinctively knows about how to navigate the world this way, and Clint is almost graceful when he gets to his feet and shakes, sending water spraying all over the walls, the floor, the door -- and Bucky.

“You asshole,” Bucky gasps, but he’s laughing, falling to his knees and then his hands are on Clint -- running through his fur and finding all of these _spots_ that make Clint want to just roll over and --

He does. Next thing he knows, he’s on his fucking back, belly in the air, whining for fucking belly rubs, and Clint has no fucking dignity left.

But then Bucky’s still laughing and rubbing his belly and Clint doesn’t give a fuck about dignity anymore.

“You figured it out,” Bucky says, sounding stunned, which is frankly just rude, so Clint curls his lip back and growls a little.

Bucky’s eyes instantly flash alpha red, like that little bit of aggression is too much for him, and Clint flinches, tipping his head back, baring his throat, like it’s automatic.

“Shh,” Bucky stays, stroking his throat. “You’re fine. You’re good. You’re so good.” Clint’s tail wags, thumping against the floor, and Bucky adds, “More like a lapdog than a wolf, but we’re getting there.”

Which is just.

Rude.

Clint leaps to his feet and tackles him, 200 pounds of sopping wet wolf, and Bucky tumbles back, catching him and laughing.

Eventually, Bucky manages to get him wrapped in a towel, drying his fur, which slowly turns into just running his fingers through it as they snuggle on the couch. Clint can’t quite figure out how to _not_ be a wolf, and most of him doesn’t want to -- he could stay like this forever, with Bucky’s fingers smoothing his fur, with his head in Bucky’s lap, with Jeopardy on the TV.

Clint is still Clint, but all the things that scared him, that made him anxious, they’re all faded now, muffled beneath the immediate pleasure in Bucky’s hands on him.

Clint drifts into sleep and it’s dark and dreamless and sweet.

*

He wakes up when Bucky licks at his muzzle, and for half a moment, he feels like he can just shake the wolf off, easy, the way he’d shaken water out of his fur earlier. But then he opens his eyes and Bucky’s in front of him in his wolf form as well, nudging at Clint and huffing impatiently, and Clint forgets all about shaking out of his wolf form.

He wags his tail and climbs off the couch, following Bucky to the door. It’s dark out and he can hear prey shuffling in the underbrush and the moon isn’t full but it’s still a soft, gentle pull that makes him want to run and to hunt.

Bucky hops up and opens the door with the ease of long practice, and then bolts out of the cottage and into the shadows. Clint follows a heartbeat later.

Clint tries to follow but Bucky is bigger and faster and Clint loses him in the woods. He slows to a stop, tail wagging cautiously, ears perked, trying to sort through too many sounds, too many smells. 

He turns, looks back the way he came, spins in a circle and almost trips over his paws, and he still has absolutely no idea where Bucky went.

His tail droops and so do his ears. Clint ducks his head, swallowing back a sound that he’s pretty sure would be small and pathetic, the kind Lucky makes when he’s really gotta pee and Clint really doesn’t want to get out of bed.

And then Bucky leaps out of the darkness, slams into his side, knocks him to the ground and pins him with a playful growl and teeth at his throat. Before Clint can panic, Bucky’s bouncing off him, eyes flashing red and lips curling back, but his tail is wagging even as he looks like he’s about to pounce again, and Clint realizes he’s playing.

He scrambles to his feet and Bucky looks like he’s about to jump and Clint finally gives into the wolfy instinct to _run_.

He knows where Bucky is this time, knows Bucky’s following, growling and snapping at his heels, knows Bucky could probably catch him easier because Clint’s still a little shaky on his paws and keeps tripping over shit.

It’s a rush, running as fast as his paws can take him, running until his heart is pounding and his lungs are burning, chasing those irritating sounds he’s been hearing in the underbrush and letting Bucky steer him away before he forgets himself and actually kills whatever animal he finds there.

Bucky catches him a time or two, leaping onto his back and sending him to the ground again, but he always lets Clint up again and keeps up the chase.

Clint kinda wants Bucky to drag him to the ground and keep him there, but playing works too.

He ducks through a river -- probably the same one he fell into the morning of the full moon -- and doubles back because he might be a wolf but he was a secret agent for longer. 

He creeps up on Bucky, finding him in a small clearing, standing alert with his ears pricked, clearly listening -- and who is he kidding, Bucky’s letting Clint catch him, he knows that’s what’s happening, but Clint is more than happy to take the opportunity.

And then he catches a hint of scent that is _irresistible_. His mouth starts watering and he forgets all about Bucky, turning his head and breathing in deeply and then taking off into the shadows towards whatever it is that’s making him so goddamn hungry.

He trips over his paws when he tries to hop over a fallen log, hitting the ground hard, rolling a bit, catching himself and scrambling back to his feet gracefully. No one saw it so it didn’t happen.

He shakes the leaves and dirt out of his fur and he’s so close to whatever that scent is, he can practically taste it, so he starts running again. He skids around a copse of trees, scrabbling for purchase in the soft dirt, and then finally finds the source of the scent and --

Bucky’s on him with no warning, with a vicious snarl, knocking him to the ground and holding him there, eyes burning red. Clint’s entire body gives into it instinctively, going limp, baring his throat with a soft whine, and if it had taken Clint a moment before to figure out that Bucky was playing, he knows instantly now that he’s not.

Bucky holds him there for a long moment, and then moves away, and when Clint tries to get up, he snaps at him until he lies still.

When he’s willing to risk it, Clint tries again, getting to his feet slowly, carefully, eyes on Bucky the entire time. He’s not all that sure what he’s done wrong, but he feels awful about it, and wonders if that’s the wolf instincts Bucky’s always going on about. He hates it.

Bucky watches him, eyes still glowing red, as he carefully inspects the source of the scent that had been so impossible to resist. His body shudders, shifts, and then he’s human -- and entirely naked -- and kneeling carefully beside something sitting in the dirt.

“It’s a trap,” Bucky tells him, and it takes a moment to register because Clint’s mind isn’t wired for speech right now, and also. Well. Bucky is naked and Clint wants to lick him.

But then he blinks and moves carefully forward, forcing himself to notice more than the scent of whatever bait they’d used, and now that he’s looking, he can see the trip wire, disappearing into the darkness.

He slinks low to the ground and whines and hears Bucky sigh, sinking his hand into the thick fur at the back of Clint’s neck.

“You gotta be careful,” he says, eyes narrow as he scans the shadows. “I told you.” Clint licks at his other hand and Bucky rolls his eyes. “It’s my fault, I guess. I haven’t been keeping them in check the way I should since you got here. I’ve been distracted.”

Clint ducks under Bucky’s arm and headbutts him until Bucky shoves at him, laughing. Clint’s really getting addicted to his laughter.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll deal with the traps tomorrow.” Then he’s up (and still naked, the light of the moon is doing amazing things for the long lines of his body) and running for the treeline and calling, “I’ll race you home.”

He transforms easily, gracefully, mid-step and by the time he hits the shadows of the trees, he’s a wolf again and there’s no way Clint’s going to be able to catch him.

He growls and tries his best anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s morning and for the first time in perhaps his entire life, Clint isn’t feeling sluggish and in need of coffee. The adrenaline of spending the night running through the forest as a wolf is still buzzing in his veins.

He wakes up before Bucky, which is unprecedented, and he’s human again, which is great. Being a wolf was fun for so many reasons, a major one of which was the way his human concerns, insecurities, and anxieties faded away beneath the instinct to run and play and howl and tackle Bucky to the ground. Staying that way forever would have been kind of nice, actually, but Clint is relieved to have his human feet and hands and everything else back again.

So relieved, that for the first time, he decides that he ought to make breakfast. Bucky’s made all the food and Clint ought to start pulling his weight, earning his keep.

He burns three pieces of French toast before Bucky drags himself into the kitchen, looking growly.

“Late night, old man?” Clint asks, flashing a sunny grin.

Bucky rubs at his eyes and scowls and says, “You’re burning everything, make some goddamn coffee,” and then he hip checks Clint out of the way and takes over cooking.

Clint blinks, startled to his very core, because he had been so focused on making Bucky some breakfast, he hadn’t even made himself coffee.

“I’m so sorry,” Clint croons to the coffee maker as he sets it to brew. “You’ll always be my first love.”

“Never thought I’d miss you sleeping in til noon,” Bucky grumbles, but there’s an amused edge to his voice.

“I’m a delight,” Clint reminds him, bouncing on his toes a little and then saying, “We should probably go out and disarm those traps, eat some Hydra agents, put them back in their place, right? I could probably figure out the wolf thing, I mean, I did it yesterday and it was easy, Bucky, I could probably do that again and then they won’t stand a chance against us.”

Bucky tangles his fingers roughly in Clint’s hair and tugs him down to press a kiss against his temple on his way to the fridge, and it’s so domestic, so automatic, that something sweet and uncertain curls up in Clint’s chest -- a hesitant sort of contentment.

It’s just. He knows this sort of sunny, sweet morning doesn’t last, that this sort of domesticity isn’t a permanent thing at all and that coming to rely on it is only the best way to have his heart broken and he ought to have learned better by now. But for now, for a moment, when Bucky is half asleep and still reaching out for him with a sort of fondness Clint’s not used to -- he thinks maybe he can lie to himself and think he deserves this. That he gets to keep it.

Clint stares at the brewing coffee and tries not to think about it.

“I’ll take care of Hydra this morning,” Bucky says. “You’ve still gotta work on control.”

Clint makes a face and turns away, fixing a cup of coffee even though it’s not done brewing and trying to figure out why that feels like a rejection -- like maybe Bucky thinks Clint’s not good enough to help him.

Before he can get too far into that spiral, Bucky comes up beside him and says, “You did so well yesterday, I did think we should celebrate, though.”

He tosses the crisco on the counter and Clint just stares at it for a moment, stunned, and he grins happily. “With _sex_?” he asks, beaming, because he’s used weirder things for lube with no regrets.

Bucky’s leaning against his back, chin hooked over his shoulder, fingers idly trailing up under Clint’s shirt, brushing nails -- fuck, were those claws? -- against Clint’s stomach and making him suck in a sharp breath and shiver. 

“I’ve got to go take care of those traps,” he says, nosing against the side of Clint’s neck. “And then I’ve got to run into town. And I thought while I was doing that --” He bites down a little on the spot where Clint’s neck joins his shoulder. “You can bake us a pie.”

It takes a while for the words to register, because Bucky’s hand has wandered up even higher, brushing too-sharp nails over Clint’s nipple and he’s having a hard enough time breathing, let alone actually paying attention to words.

And then he stammers, “P-pie?”

Bucky laughs, pulling away. “For dessert,” he says. “After dinner. To celebrate. Why, what did you have in mind?”

Clint spins around, gripping the counter for balance and hoping Bucky can see just how appalled he is by the look in his face. “ _Pie_?” He repeats incredulously.

“There are apples in the fridge.” Bucky slides a plate of French toast on the table, points at it, says, “Eat that, you burnt a lot of energy last night.” Then he steals Clint’s coffee, drains it, and heads for the door.

“Hey -- wait!” Clint calls. “I don’t know how to make pie!”

Bucky smirks and says, “Look it up on that phone Natalia gave you.”

And then he’s gone.

And Clint just starts swearing.

*

Clint thinks about a lot of things. He thinks about how Bucky is a dirty rotten tease and how very unfair that is. He thinks about Bucky out dealing with Hydra and how Clint ought to be there helping him out. He thinks about how he’s trying to work on _obedience_. He wonders why the fuck obedience matters now when it never did before.

And he makes a motherfucking pie.

It’s lopsided and burned on the edges and probably raw in the middle. He tried, though. That’s gotta count for something.

*

Clint tries to cook dinner but it goes about as well as the French toast did, and when Bucky gets home, he’s got all the windows and door propped open to air the smoke out, and a pot of destroyed pasta sauce sitting out by the tree line.

Clint is sitting despondently by the front door. 

“Hey,” he says when he sees Bucky step out of the woods. He’d heard his footsteps coming, and he knew Bucky probably let him hear that on purpose. “I didn’t burn your house down, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Bucky cocks his head and looks amused and says, “I was a little worried when I smelled the smoke. Did you burn yourself?”

Clint snorts, drawing his shoulders back with indignation. “I’m a secret agent,” he says. “I’m certified in over 37 different weapons, I’ve taken out hives of criminal activity on my own, I can shoot a target at 200 feet with a paleo-whatever weapon. I’m capable of cooking without wounding myself.”

Bucky nudges at the smoking pot with his foot as he comes closer and says, “I wouldn’t exactly call this cooking.”

“Yeah, well. I made a fucking pie,” Clint grumbles, crossing his arms and glaring into the distance.

“Nice. Because I bought stuff to make pizza for our celebratory dinner?”

Clint’s entire body lights up and his disgruntlement at having nearly burned the cottage to the ground is forgotten as he hops to his feet. “Are you serious?”

“You don’t even have to sell a kidney,” Bucky teases, leading the way into the house and setting the bags he’d brought on the counter.

“This is possibly the best day of my life,” Clint informs him, happily helping him put the groceries away. “And you are going to regret having left me alone for the day, because I have had time to think and I have questions. I’m pretty sure you owe me unlimited answers after I figured everything out yesterday without your assistance.”

“I’m pretty sure I helped with that,” Bucky laughs. “But sure. If you want answers, ask your questions.”

He grabs a bowl, starts tossing flour and other things into it, and Clint doesn’t bother offering to help. He has skills, okay, but cooking is not one of them. Instead, he hops up on the counter to watch -- because kneading dough does incredible things for Bucky’s arms -- and says, “First question. Before me, when was the last time you had sex? And was it with Steve?”

“I told you, the thing with Steve was when I was fourteen,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. Clint just lifts a pointed eyebrow and Bucky huffs. “And no, that was not the last time. The last time was probably 1944. That I remember, anyway.”

Clint hums thoughtfully and says, “Was it with a dude?”

Bucky shoots him a look. “I’m pretty sure that you can think of better questions.”

“I’ve got a strategy,” Clint tells him. “Dude?”

“Probably. Maybe. Could go either way. Next question?”

Huh. So it wasn’t the fact that Clint was a guy that made Bucky get all shy after they hooked up. Clint feels something inside him relax a little at that and asks, “Be honest, how often did soldiers hook up with each other during the war, because I have seen the documentaries and the Howling Commandos were hot.”

Bucky just stares at him, not even kneading the pizza dough anymore, and Clint blinks innocently. “I never hooked up with the Howling Commandos,” he said finally, slowly. “What documentaries have you watched?”

“The one about how you were the best sniper in the whole war,” Clint hums, casual. “Jerked off to it a few times, back in my youth in the circus. They had some footage of you with a rifle and I just. Jesus.”

Bucky blinks slowly and keeps kneading the dough and looks a little haunted and a whole lot lost and Clint’s strategy is working perfectly here, so he goes for blood and asks, almost absent-mindedly, “Hey, why didn’t you kill Steve when Hydra sent you to?”

“What the fuck,” Bucky says, and Clint winces. Apparently slipping the question in all casually was not going to be as easy as he’d hoped.

“You know. You were under Hydra control. They mentally calibrated you or whatever. They sent you after Steve. And you didn’t kill him. Why?”

“Because I broke their conditioning,” Bucky says slowly. “Because I -- because Steve -- Why are you asking this?”

Clint slumps against the counter and shrugs and says, “Because you know I saw Nat in town. Because you know I didn’t try to eat her even though she wasn’t pack. Because I’ve been thinking that maybe… maybe Nat is pack. To me. She’s family. And Steve’s your family. So… maybe if you went to New York, with me, to see Steve, it would all be okay and you wouldn’t --”

“No,” Bucky says, cold. “Next question. Change the subject or it’ll be your last one.”

Clint does his best to hide the shiver that Bucky’s tone sends through him, but he’s pretty sure his cheeks flush. It’s just -- it does things to him, when Bucky gets bossy.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Clint says, and Bucky’s tossing the dough in a bowl and going for the tomatoes. “Uhh. What is your stance on… dogs.”

“Dogs?”

“As pack members?”

“Dogs are prey,” Bucky tells him. “Not pack.”

Clint steals a chunk of tomato and shoves it in his mouth to keep from blurting out an impassioned argument against that.

Bucky is going to love Clint’s dog when Clint finally drags him home. He won’t have a choice.

*

The pizza is delicious and after it’s gone and Clint has licked his plate clean, he reluctantly puts grabs his pie and puts it on the table. 

“I’m not very good at…” he gestures vaguely. “Making things. Edible things.”

Bucky studies the pie and says, “It probably tastes better than it looks?”

“You still want to try it?” Clint asks, surprised, because in his experience, people generally don’t take well to being served burned or raw or unappetizing food. He’s pretty sure that’s 78% of the reason why his dad started beating his mom.

“Sure,” Bucky says, easy. “You made it.”

The pie is… not the worst thing that’s ever been in Clint’s mouth.

*

Since all his attempts at cooking proved to be relatively inedible, Clint volunteers to do the dishes.

He’s halfway done clearing the table when Bucky tosses a thing of lube on it and says, “So, about that celebration.”

“Oh man,” Clint says, staring at the lube, a huge grin slowly taking over his face. “Pizza and lube, you sure know how to treat a guy.”

“I’m a romantic,” Bucky says with a shrug, but Clint can see a bit of hesitation in it, so he flashes his brightest, toothiest smile, and says, “I’m gonna romance the shit out of you, Barnes. Take your pants off.”

Bucky laughs and the hesitation is gone when he suggests, “Save the dishes for later?”

Clint’s already kicking his pants off as he dashes for the stairs to the loft.

He’s down to his underwear, tangled up in his shirt and finally managing to shrug his way free, when Bucky joins him and drops a heavy set of cuffs on the bedside table.

Clint goes still, licking his lips and looking at them with just a little bit of nervousness, because he’s always been up for that before, but after the panic attack he’d had the day before, he’s not quite sure this time.

“I was thinking,” Bucky says, watching him carefully. “Before we get to the celebration part, I wanted to try something.”

“Oh god,” Clint whines -- he can’t help it, his dignity fled a long time ago and Bucky is a fucking cocktease. “What. What do I had to do? Do I have to meditate? I swear to god, Bucky if I have to --”

“No,” Bucky says, oddly gently. “Why don’t you get on the bed and I’ll show you what I mean.”

Clint had been going to take his underwear off, because he’s efficient if nothing else, but now he’s not so sure, so he leaves them on, climbing onto the bed easily enough.

He’s half expecting Bucky to go right for the cuffs and he’s not sure he’s into that right now, so he’s relieved when Bucky sits on the edge of the bed beside him, away from the cuffs, and studies him for a long moment. He runs his gaze slowly over Clint’s face, his bare shoulders and his chest, down to his hips, where he lingers for a little while, before licking his lips.

“Before the celebration part, I was just thinking we could work on control some more.”

“But I did that,” Clint argues, leaning back against the headboard and crossing his arms over his chest. 

“You shifted on your own and kept your humanity while you did it,” Bucky agrees. “But it’s equally important -- maybe more important -- to resist the shift entirely, no matter how out of control you are, emotionally.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re gonna tie me down and make me talk about my feelings,” Clint groans, and then Bucky slides his hand from Clint’s knee, up to his thigh and then back down, to his ankle, where he lingers.

“No,” he says. “Do you trust me?”

And Clint does, is the thing, so if Bucky wants to tie him up and talk about feelings, Clint’s gonna try his best. So he nods and then yelps when Bucky grabs his ankle and tugs, until Clint is sprawled on his back. Then Bucky climbs onto the bed, fully clothed, and kneels beside him, not touching at all.

Clint could really use some touching, but he stays quiet and still the way he knows Bucky likes.

“I’m not going to bind you,” Bucky tells him, soft. “But I want you to put your hands on the headboard and keep them there. Can you do that for me?”

Clint lets out the tiny, relieved breath that he’d been holding and does as he’s told. He feels his biceps and shoulders shifting from the position and he’s pretty sure they’re going to start to ache pretty soon, but given the hungry way Bucky watches his arms, Clint’s gonna do his best to keep them up there as long as he can.

“Now are we gonna talk about our feelings?” Clint says. “Because I gotta say, I’m feeling kinda awkward nearly naked while you’ve still got all your clothes on.”

Bucky ignores him, still studying his body thoughtfully. “Did you know while I held you still and jerked you off, your ears--” He runs the tip of his finger over the sensitive edge of Clint’s ear, tucking his hair behind it. Clint shivers. “Your ears were pointed.”

“No,” he says, and it’s an embarrassing croak. “I, uhh. Didn’t know that.” He clears his throat.

“Mhmm,” Bucky hums. “And while I fucked your mouth, your eyes were glowing gold,” he says, casual, like the words don’t instantly cause Clint’s mouth to go dry.

“They, uhm. Were they?” Clint asks, breathy now. He swallows hard. “I didn’t know.”

“They were. And you scratched my back all to hell with your nails, too. I’m pretty sure they got a little too sharp.”

Clint winces and says, “I didn’t mean--”

“I didn’t say I minded,” Bucky says mildly. “But if we’re working on control, I thought maybe it would be a good idea if I got to taste you this time -- and you had to control yourself while I did.”

Clint lets out all his breath in a shaky exhale, tightening his grip on the headboard and says, as breezily as he can, “Oh, sure. That sounds like… like an okay way to spend some time.”

Bucky drags his palm up Clint’s inner thigh, stopping just as his fingertips slip beneath the fabric, and says, “I thought it might kill a few hours. Keep your hands up there for me.” He flashes a wolfish grin. “But you can make all the sounds you need to.”

Clint decides then and there that he’s not going to make a sound, not a single sound, and Bucky’s just going to have to accept that he’s got much more self control than --

“Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” Clint gasps, because Bucky is dragging his mouth along his inner thigh, with opened-mouth kisses and flicks of his tongue and -- are those his fucking teeth?

“We’re just starting,” Bucky says, his breath warm against Clint’s cock which is already straining against his underwear -- why the fuck hadn’t he taken his goddamn underwear off when he had the chance -- and Clint wiggles a little in anticipation because Bucky’s going to suck him off nice and quick, he just has to and --

Bucky skips right over his cock and lands somewhere on his abs and they’re great abs, Clint is fully in favour of Bucky giving his abs some attention with his mouth, but for fuck’s sake.

“You’re growling, sweetheart,” Bucky tells him. “And I haven’t even started to mark you up yet.”

Clint throws his head back and squeezes his eyes shut and says, “Mother fucking son of a fucking bitch fuck god damn it, Bucky.”

Bucky bites down just below his nipple, hard enough to make him yelp, and says mildly, “If you want something, you’re going to have to ask nicely.”

Clint growls. On purpose this time. And Bucky doesn’t seem to mind, just hums softly and starts running his tongue roughly over Clint’s nipple, again and again until Clint would swear to god he could feel it all the way down to his bones -- his skin is flushed and over-sensitive and he doesn’t know if he can come from having one goddamn nipple played with but fuck, he is willing to find out.

And then Bucky bites it, hard, and Clint moans sharply and swallows back a sob and realizes his claws are digging into the headboard.

Shit, fuck, son of a bitch.

He does some deep breathing exercises. He closes his eyes. He pictures himself walking down a goddamn forest path towards his fucking safe place. There’s sunlight filtering through the fucking trees. Everything smells like -- like fucking roses and fucking -- fucking --

Bucky switches to other nipple and drags his teeth over it and then starts in like he’s got all the time in the world, while his hands drag down Clint’s sides -- and he’s using his fucking claws, that’s so brutally unfair, expecting Clint to keep his hidden when he gets to use his willynilly--

And then they’re slipping into Clint’s waistband, tugging it down, just enough to show his hipbones, and Bucky lifts his head.

His lips are swollen and his eyes are dark and heavy-lidded. “Doing okay?” he asks. His voice his husky and rough and Clint isn’t going to be able to do this. He’s just not.

He’s already biting down on his bottom lip so hard, he can taste blood -- are his teeth fucking fangs? He pokes at them with his tongue.

Yes.

Fuck.

“Fine,” Clint pants, trying to keep his teeth hidden. “Carry on, as you were. I’m good.”

Bucky’s lips quirk, a small, amused grin, and he brushes his hair out of his eyes and says, “I want to mark your throat up.”

“Thought you were a werewolf, not a vampire --” Clint tries to say breezily, but his efforts are ruined when he can’t help a strangled moan as Bucky gently tips Clint’s chin back, bares his throat, and then bites down hard on the tendon where his neck meets his shoulder.

“Oh shit,” Clint cries, and he sounds wrecked, and Bucky hasn’t even touched his dick yet. He forgets all about self-respect, about control, about proving that he can do this. “Oh fuck, Bucky, c’mon, please. I can’t do it, I can’t, I give up, do whatever you want to me, I don’t care, I just need -- you have to fucking touch me. _Please_.” His voice is broken and he’s begging and he doesn’t even care.

Bucky just lifts his head up and cups Clint’s jaw and says, gentle, “You’re doing so good. Your eyes are real pretty when they burn gold like that, sweetheart.”

“You’re an asshole,” Clint tells him shakily, and Bucky laughs.

“Turn over for me.”

The chances of Bucky touching his dick if he’s laying on it are pretty small, but Clint is just… getting used to being obedient. Maybe that’s Bucky’s whole plan here.

It probably is.

He turns over onto his stomach but he’s not happy about it, scowling and saying, “You’re a cocktease, Bucky Barnes, Steve shoulda warned me.”

Bucky nips at the bruise that Clint can feel growing on the side of his neck and Clint whines a little, wiggling back towards him, trying to get some sort of friction against the mattress if Bucky won’t give it to him with his hand. Or his mouth. Or hell, if Bucky just wanted to let Clint rub himself off against his thigh, Clint is up for that -- Bucky has fucking amazing thighs and --

Bucky smacks his ass, just once, and says, firm, “You’re supposed to be staying still for me.”

“Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” Clint moans, and then Bucky’s licking a path down the middle of his spine and Clint is doing everything he can to keep still, muffling his needy and embarrassing sounds against his biceps.

His toes curl -- he can’t help that -- and he hears this claws tear into the sheet.

Fuck, he can’t fucking control this.

“Bucky, I can’t,” he sobs, and he’s too desperate even to feel embarrassed anymore.

“You’re doing fine,” Bucky croons, and then he’s licking his way inside him, both hands on Clint’s ass, holding him still.

The headboard cracks and Clint whines, high pitched and needy and he can’t help trying to rock forward against the mattress. He can feel his cock leaking, leaving a wet trail there, and he’s going to come, and Bucky still hasn’t touched his fucking dick yet.

“I’m gonna die. Bucky, Bucky, I’m gonna die, fuck, I can’t, I’m gonna -- I’m gonna -- Bucky,” he babbles, most of the words mindless and muffled in his arm.

“Try not to come yet, sweetheart,” Bucky says, gentle, and Clint can feel it inside. Then Bucky’s licking at him again and Clint just closes his eyes and bites down on his arm to keep the keening sounds as quiet as he can.

He tastes his own blood because his teeth aren’t fucking human anymore and he doesn’t even care.

He’s shuddering, panting, his face sticky with desperate tears, when Bucky finally stops, nipping at the dip his hips make just above his ass and humming, “You taste so good, Clint.”

“Do I?” Clint mumbles, feverish and barely able to string the syllables together. “You know what would taste better? My dick.”

Bucky laughs, low and soft, and then he’s getting up off the bed. Clint’s eyes fly open, startled, and he cranes his neck to see over his shoulder, still hanging onto the cracked headboard.

“What are you -- where are you going?”

“I’m not gonna torture you anymore, sweetheart.” Bucky leans over Clint, still not touching him, and grabs the cuffs he’d left on the other bedside table.

“You -- but we --” Clint tries his best to wipe at his tear tracks with his bare shoulder, still clinging to the headboard. “But I was being good -- I was trying so hard. I know I -- I could’ve done better, I’ll try to do better.”

“Clint,” Bucky says, going still, and he sounds serious and concerned and Clint doesn’t _want_ serious and concerned. “Sit up for me.”

Clint rolls over, letting go of the headboard, and it feels like giving up. He feels small and stupid and his teeth are finally blunt and human again, his nails soft. “I wasn’t good enough?” he asks, feeling young and wrong-footed. “You don’t wanna have sex with me? I thought -- I thought I earned it.” He looks away, staring at his hands and feeling his cheeks flush miserably.

Bucky climbs back on the bed, still holding the cuffs, and sits near him but still doesn’t touch him. “Okay, Clint,” he says, soft. “We need to talk.”

“How come we need to talk while I’m naked and you’re fully clothed?” He knows he sounds sullen and stupid but he can’t help it, and he only looks at Bucky and makes eye contact when Bucky touches his cheek and makes him.

“Because I need you to focus,” Bucky says, and he’s solemn again. “I’ll let you earn kisses and I’ll let you earn questions but when I fuck you - and I’m going to - it’s going to be because I want to and you want me to. Okay? You are never going to need to earn me wanting you. You are always going to be good enough for that.”

His words sit miserably in Clint’s gut and he says, “But what if I’m not —”

“You will always be good enough for me,” Bucky says, slow and firm. “Okay?”

Clint studies him for a moment, wanting to argue, to ask about eventualities, to run a few scenarios by him, just to check and get reassurances. But it’s Bucky -- and every instinct Clint’s got is saying he can trust him. Clint’s always trusted his instincts, so he says quietly, “Okay.”

“Good boy,” Bucky says with a slow grin, one that seems to promise all manner of things that Clint’s not all that sure Bucky is ever going to fucking get around to following through on.

“I might forget,” Clint confesses, wincing a little. “I’m not good at --”

“Then I’ll remind you,” Bucky tells him, like it’s that simple, and he tugs Clint up against his chest and kisses him, hard and hungry and without any of the restraint he’d been so careful to keep before.

It probably does more to soothe Clint’s worries than all his words would have. It’s a physical demonstration of affection and Clint’s always trusted those more than words.

He crawls into Bucky’s lap, tangling his hands in Bucky’s sweater and tugging at it, getting it all tangled up under his arms, even as he bites at his mouth and soothes the marks he leaves with his tongue. He pulls at Bucky, trying to get fall back and take Bucky with him, doing just about anything he can think of to get Bucky on top and inside of him.

It’s a mess but Clint likes it when it’s a mess and then Bucky’s pulling away with a laugh. “I thought you wanted me on my back,” he asks, and his lips are still swollen and now his hair’s a mess and his cheeks are flushed. “From how you went on and on about tying me down and riding me, I thought you’d be more into the idea, because fuck if I haven’t been able to get the idea out of my head.”

Clint swallows hard and takes a deep, steadying breath -- maybe all that meditation shit was good for something -- and tries to say casually, “Oh, well, if that’s what you want.”

“Been wanting it since you ran your dirty mouth about it,” Bucky growls, and then he’s manhandling Clint again -- and apparently that’s a thing Clint’s real fond of -- and falling back onto the bed, taking Clint with him.

Pushing himself up with two hands on Bucky’s chest, Clint straddles his hips and tries to catch his balance, blinking down at him.

“Shit, Bucky,” he says, without thinking. “You’re so pretty, take your shirt off.”

“Again with the romance,” Bucky says, but it’s fond even as he rolls his eyes and pulls his sweater up over his head.

He doesn’t get tangled in it and Clint’s distantly jealous about that but mostly distracted because he finally gets to get his goddamn hands on Bucky’s naked chest.

“I’m gonna torture you until you beg,” Clint says darkly, like a promise, as he drags a thumb over Bucky’s nipple. “I’m gonna mark you up with my mouth and not even think about touching your dick --” Sure, he’s grinding down against it as he speaks, but those are semantics and Clint cannot be concerned with those right now -- “and then, when you beg me to, I’m gonna --”

Bucky tosses the thing of lube so that it hits Clint’s stomach and bounces down, landing on his chest, and says, “Aren’t you gonna get yourself ready for me, sweetheart?”

Clint snaps his mouth shut, swallows back a needy little sound, and says, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Bucky smiles. It’s unbearably smug and Clint wants to kiss it right off his stupid face, but he’s busy with the lube, and then Bucky says, innocent, “And you forgot the cuffs.”

“Jesus Christ,” Clint snaps, getting up on his knees and leaning over Bucky, reaching for the --

“Or we could just --” Bucky’s tongue drags across the underside of his cock before he takes him in his mouth and Clint’s entire body shudders. He catches his balance on the headboard and Bucky purrs in the back of his throat as he swallows Clint down and Clint -- and Clint --

“No, no, no, fuck, no,” Clint babbles, sitting back on his hips hard, clutching the goddamn cuffs. “I am going to ride you and you are not going to fucking make me come before then, do you understand?” 

Bucky grins, slow, and pulls his arms up over his head, taking the opportunity to stretch, arching off the bed a little bit, and it’s obscene and distracting and Clint always sort of felt like being on top meant being in control but apparently that is not the case.

He leans up -- more aware of where he’s putting his dick this time -- and quickly snaps the cuffs around Bucky’s wrists, and then he sits back down on his hips, watching him suspiciously.

“Open yourself up for me,” Bucky says, rough. “I want to see you.”

“Fuck,” Clint says, and then keeps up the string of curse words as he fumbles with the lube, slicking up his fingers.

“You’ve got such a dirty mouth,” Bucky tells him, chiding. “Anybody ever tell you that?”

“You like my dirty mouth,” Clint says, hoping it’s true, and then he’s pushing one finger inside where he’s already loose and wet from Bucky’s mouth.

“I do,” Bucky agrees, his eyes dark and fixed on Clint’s hips, on the way Clint’s lifting himself up on his knees, rocking back against his own finger. “Try another one, honey,” he coaxes. “You look so good.”

Clint glances up at him through his lashes as he pushes another finger inside with a breathy whine, twisting his fingers a little. Bucky’s watching him with wide eyes, licking his lips and breathing hard and when Clint pushes another finger inside, he sees Bucky’s eyes flash red.

He can’t help a breathless grin as he says, “So much for you being in complete control at all times, huh, Bucky?”

Bucky twists his wrists against the cuffs and shifts his hips a little, pointedly, and says, “You really wanna draw this out?”

It’s been drawn out. Clint is almost dying from how long this has been drawn out. This is the longest he’s ever been hard in his entire life -- sex is meant to last between fifteen and twenty minutes and then there’s time for a quick cuddle and then it’s time for shower and a coffee.

“Fuck you,” Clint says, as he undoes Bucky’s jeans. He’s not wearing underwear.

Clint ought to have thought of that.

As it is, though, all he’s got room for in his brain is Bucky’s dick, and how it feels in his hand as he slicks lube over him, and how it’s going to feel inside him.

“Are you gonna make me coffee after this?” he asks, and Bucky’s eyes flash red, he curls his lips back in a snarl, and Clint grins, slow. “Losing control?” he asks, innocent, and then, when Bucky opens his mouth, probably to get bossy, Clint bites his bottom lip and he shifts, guiding Bucky inside him.

It hurts. He should have thought of that, should have remembered how big Bucky’d been in his mouth -- in his throat -- how hard it had been to breathe -- and maybe he shoulda taken a little bit more time making sure he was ready for this.

But it feels like he’s been getting ready for it for fucking years, and Clint’s never minded a bit of pain anyway. It makes everything sharper and more in focus and if Bucky wants to hurt him, Clint’s probably going to let him.

The head board’s already cracked and when Bucky twists his wrists for leverage and arches his back, shoving up and deep inside him, it splinters even more, something snapping and landing heavily on the floor.

Clint laughs breathlessly, a little hysterically, as he loses his balance and catches himself on the broken headboard, which creaks alarmingly.

He’s finding it incredibly hard to catch his breath and Bucky’s deep inside him and breathing heavily underneath him and Clint knows he’s got to move, got to make this good, but all he can do is cling to the headboard and laugh, which just makes him even more aware of how deep inside him Bucky is, and how big, and he pants, “Buck -- Bucky, we broke your bed.”

“We haven’t even fucking started yet,” Bucky snaps, rocking his hips. “I need you to fucking --”

“Oh jesus,” Clint moans, rocking down into his motions. “Oh, shit, Bucky, yes, okay.”

He’d wanted it fast and rough and apparently Bucky is finally on board with that plan. Clint would tease him about it, point out how out of control he is, mention that his eyes are burning bright and maybe make a joke about him growing a tail, but.

Well.

All his energy is taken up with trying to breathe.

He loses his grip on the headboard and loses his balance too, catching himself on Bucky’s chest, still rocking against him and Bucky looks so pretty like that, flushed and panting, his shoulders all tense from whatever huge amount of effort he’s making not to rip the cuffs from the broken headboard.

And sure. They’re fucking. And Clint should be totally into the fast, messy sex they’ve got going on. And normally, he would be. 

Sex is not the time for feelings.

But this time, as he clings to Bucky’s shoulders and Bucky arches his hips and pushes up inside him, Clint just gets overwhelmed by this intense feeling of… he isn’t even sure. Affection? Fondness? 

“Hey,” he says, and Bucky slows, hesitates, scanning his face like he thinks Clint’s gonna want to stop. “Hey,” Clint says again, swallowing because his throat feels tight. He traces Bucky’s bottom lip and the line of his jaw. “Bucky. I really like you.”

“Shit,” Bucky says with a soft smile. “You’re such a mess, Barton.”

Then he wrenches his left arm free of the headboard and all Clint can do is yelp and laugh as Bucky flips him onto his back because apparently he doubts Clint’s ability to focus here.

It’s probably fair.

“In my defense,” Clint says, sliding his hands up to the back of Bucky’s neck. “I wasn’t prepared for so many feelings.”

“We can talk about feelings after,” Bucky tells him, and when Clint opens his mouth to agree, Bucky leans down and kisses him, licking his way into his mouth, and Clint forgets everything he intended to say, and about his feelings too.

It’s hard to think of anything other than Bucky’s hands on his hips, pulling him up as he pushes inside him, hard and slick and hitting his prostate often enough to make Clint think Bucky might be just as good a marksman as he is.

Not that he’s gonna admit that outloud.

Especially not now, when he can barely breathe.

“Bucky,” he pants, and then Bucky’s cock drags slow and sure inside of him in a way that makes his voice go high and broken. “Oh god, okay.”

Bucky laughs against his throat and it sounds just as shaky and wrecked as Clint’s voice had. “I’ve still got that gag,” he says, tanging both hands in Clint’s hair and tugging sharply. It’s too much sensation and Clint just whines and lifts both legs, doing his best to wrap them around Bucky’s hips and pull him inside deeper, harder.

“N-next time,” Clint stammers. “Next time I want you to tie me down and make me be still and shut me up and fuck me however you want. Okay?”

Bucky nips at his earlobe and starts moving faster. 

“I’ll be so good for you,” Clint tells him. He’s barely aware of what he’s saying anymore. “Whatever you want, Bucky, you can have me, however -- I just -- I’ll be so good.”

Bucky lifts off a bit, still fucking him, but brushing his hair back out of his eyes and saying, “You’re already perfect for me. Now shut up.”

Clint laughs and it ends in a whine when Bucky pushes a hand between them, wrapping it around his cock, which is so fucking hard and already wet at the tip.

“Hey -- hey,” Clint gasps, and he’s practically seeing stars as he tries to arch up into Bucky’s touch and grind back against his cock. “Bucky you finally touched my dick.”

Bucky laughs and Clint swears to god he can feel it echoing all the way down to his bones -- he’s making his alpha happy, he fucking wants to preen, but most of all, he’s making _Bucky_ happy -- and in the end, that’s what makes him come, spilling all over Bucky’s hand and his own stomach.

It was the laughing, or the way Bucky’s hand squeezed around him just perfectly when he laughed. Either way.

“So pretty,” Bucky tells him, still warm and amused and hard inside him, his hips snapping as he shoves deeper and Clint just-- his entire body is still shaking with the aftermath of finally getting to fucking come and he’s so high on adrenaline and hormones and whatever the fuck else is happening here, he’s worried his chest is going to burst right open and his heart is gonna tumble out because it’s probably not just affection here, let’s be real, it’s finally love, and that’s fucking terrifying.

It’s hard to be scared when Bucky’s fucking him, though.

He’s probably going to start babbling about feelings again and maybe the gag is a good idea but as it stands, Clint’s gotta do something with his mouth and Bucky’s just panting and trying to breathe and Clint doesn’t wanna smother him or anything by trying to kiss him -- he doesn’t wanna risk doing anything to make the fucking fantastic sex stop.

So instead, he buries his face against the side of Bucky’s neck and bites down, hard. Right on that same tendon that Bucky seems so fond of biting on his own neck.

And Bucky’s hips stutter and he swears, low and violent, his entire body shaking as he comes deep inside him.

Clint still doesn’t let go. Not when Bucky’s body relaxes by slow degrees, not when he comes up to stroke Clint’s hair like Clint’s the one who needs to be soothed here. Not when Bucky shifts a little, pulling out and easing Clint’s legs down from around his hips, stroking his arms and his shoulders and his sides like he thinks Clint’s somehow freaking out here.

Clint’s not freaking out, he’s just biting down and holding his breath to keep all the terrifying emotions buried deep in his own chest, that’s all. It’s perfectly reasonable.

“Clint, sweetheart,” Bucky says, voice a rough rumble that makes Clint shiver. “You gotta let go now.”

Clint supposes it’s rude to keep biting his alpha, even if it’s necessary. So he does let go, dragging his tongue across the tooth marks he left, apologetic.

“Sorry,” he says, pressing a kiss there too. “Sorry.”

Bucky smoothes Clint’s hair back again and cradles his face and says, quiet, “I’m less worried about that and more worried about the tears.”

Clint makes a face. “Aw, hell no, Barnes. I don’t cry during sex. No one’ll believe you if you say I do.”

“Who’m I gonna tell?” Bucky asks, brushing at his cheeks with his thumbs. 

Aw, shit. He totally cried.

In his defense, it wasn’t the sex. It was the _feelings_.

Clint ducks his head against Bucky’s shoulder -- it’s a real nice shoulder -- and says, plaintive, “I need coffee.”

“It’s late,” Bucky tells him, cadence soft and soothing. He’s still pinning Clint to the bed, like he’s afraid Clint’s going to bolt.

Bolting sounds like such a good idea.

Instead, he tightens his hold on Bucky and says, all false bravado, “So, that was fun, huh? After sex, I generally go for showering and coffee -- it’s never too late for coffee -- or round 2, so what do you think --”

Bucky tugs lightly on his hair and nips his jaw and says, “We’re gonna have to talk about this.”

“About the sex?” Clint asks brightly. “Well, I didn’t take you for the needy sort, but if you’ve got confidence issues and need feedback, I gotta tell you, I would entirely rate the sex as an A+, would fuck again. I mean, sure, we broke the bed, and you’d promised to let me ride you and then totally flipped things mid-sex, but I’m flexible, and --”

Bucky lifts his head. His hair is a mess and it sends a pang of something bittersweet and sharp through his chest and Clint is so fucked. So entirely fucked. Feelings have happened and he’s willing to bet they’ve got nothing to do with the werewolf instincts Bucky’s always warning him about.

Bucky smiles -- his lips are swollen and his cheeks are flushed and he says, “I just think you should know. I really like you too.”

The sore spot in Clint’s chest cracks open, slow and unavoidable, and he just knows. There’s no backing out, there’s no take-backs. He is entirely screwed and he’s going to end up with a broken heart, sobbing into a bucket of ice cream while Natasha watches judgingly from across the room while sharpening her favourite knives and planning to gut Bucky like a fish for daring to make Clint cry.

Fuck.

“I’m really sorry,” Clint says, voice trembling a little. This is unsustainable. Clint knows it’s unsustainable. Because at the end of the day, he’s going to go back to New York and back to his job and back to Natasha and Steve, and he doesn’t know if Bucky’s ever going to be ready for that.

Bucky shifts off of him, rearranging him so that Clint’s back is to Bucky’s chest, arms tight around him. It’s like Bucky just knows that talking about feelings is easier without eye contact.

Clint braces himself for whatever emotional discussion Bucky wants to have and he’s entirely unprepared for Bucky to say, soft, “I’m not.”

Like it’s that simple. Like the fucking Winter Soldier can go through decades of torture and mental recalibration and brainwashing and come out the other side completely content with the idea that somehow, he’s got some sort of feelings for Clint Barton, human dumpster fire.  
M  
Who apparently cries during sex.

Clint scrunches up his face and doesn’t know what to say at all.

They shower together and Bucky is careful and sweet as he helps Clint clean himself off, as he washes Clint’s hair, because Clint’s entire body feels too exhausted and heavy to do much of anything at all. 

Feelings have never agreed with him.

“I’ll make you coffee in the morning,” Bucky promises, and then he lets Clint cling to him like an octopus with no self-respect and they sleep.

*

Morning comes and the smell of coffee wakes him, which is the perfect start to the day, except Bucky’s not in bed with him anymore.

Clint yawns and stumbles through making himself a cup and then finds his way to the front step, where Bucky is chopping wood again.

He’s not wearing a shirt this time, thank fuck. 

Clint sips his coffee and studies Bucky at his leisure. He’s a little disappointed to find that the mark he’d left on Bucky’s neck isn’t there anymore, but then shrugs. Just means he gets to make it again.

Bucky pretends not to notice Clint’s blatant ogling but the tips of his ears slowly turn pink.

“So what’s on the itinerary today?” Clint asks, when he’s finally awake enough for syllables. “More sexual torture?”

Bucky leans the axe against the tree stump and turns to look at him. He hesitates for a moment and then says, careful, “I saw Natalia in town yesterday.”

Clint chokes on his coffee but recovers gracefully. “Oh please tell me you guys didn’t try to kill each other.”

“She watched me from down the street while deliberately sharpening her knife,” Bucky says, coming closer. He drops to the ground to sit at Clint’s feet.

“Knew it,” Clint mumbles, eyes narrowing. Natasha always has Clint’s back.

“What’s she playing at?”

Clint considers for a minute. It’s arrogant as fuck to assume that he could ever know Natasha’s play, but he does his best. “She hasn’t told Steve,” he says finally. “She checked in with me before she made a move. I did my best to reassure her that everything was fine. I’m pretty sure she suspects what you are -- what we both are. And I think she respects me enough to let me make my own choices. And she’ll probably only intervene if I make the wrong one.”

“And what’s the wrong choice?”

“In this situation?” Clint slurps his coffee. “Probably shacking up with you indefinitely in an idyllic cottage in the woods in the middle of Russia hunting Hydra agents on the full moons.”

Bucky leans back against him, careful, and slowly the tension bleeds out of his shoulders, and Clint can’t help it; he balances his coffee cup on one knee and uses his other hand to run his fingers through Bucky’s hair. 

It’s all sunspots and bird song and the sort of sappily sweet domesticity that Clint’s always thought just wasn’t meant to be something he got to have.

But now, for however long this lasts, he gets to have it. Like a dream, one he knows isn’t going to last -- it can’t. Not for someone like Clint.

And it’s not so scary, not when it’s this simple. Coffee, morning, shirtless Bucky, birds singing.

“But I kinda like the idea of shacking up with you here and hunting Hydra on the full moons,” he confesses, barely a whisper. “Indefinitely.”

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes.

And then the birds stop singing.

Clint frowns, lifting his head, because without the birds, he is suddenly aware that their little part of the forest has gone startling, entirely silent, except for the wind drifting through the branches.

“Bucky,” he says, cautions, but Bucky’s already jumping to his feet, graceful and predatory, eyes flashing red and fixed on the trees. He knocks Clint’s mug to the ground where it cracks, coffee slowly leaking into the soil.

“Bucky,” Clint says again, wary, scanning the trees, but he can’t see any threats.

“Get inside,” Bucky says, urgent. “Clint. Go.”

Clint stands up -- and he’s not _going inside_ , he’s not leaving Bucky out there, he’s --

There is a metallic click and the atmospheric pressure changes, the air is heavy, and it’s all the warning Clint gets before the cottage at his back is lit up from the inside.

The explosion is instant and complete, a wall of flame, heat and impact that sends him tumbling through the air and landing hard against the trunk of a tree across the clearing, hard enough to snap bones and tendons and fill his mouth with the taste of blood and gasoline. There’s a blinding flash of pain and then nothing but darkness.

He’s not sure how long it lasts and when it starts to fade, all he can hear is a sharp ringing in his ears.

Clint tries to push himself up but his body won’t listen, won’t respond. He opens his eyes and turns his head and he can see flames, can see flattened tree trunks and a crater where the cottage once stood, and he realizes that somewhere, somehow, in all the mess of the explosion, the fight or flight instinct had kicked in and his body had shifted and now he was a wolf.

It doesn’t matter -- his body is broken and bleeding, burned, he can smell it.

And he can’t get up and run or fight when Hydra agents, dressed in protective gear, appear out of the shadows and come for him.

He tries his best to get to his feet but his back is broken.

They slam a rod that sends a strong electrical current into his body and he shudders, cries out, and then everything is gone.

At least he doesn’t have to smell the burning anymore.

*

Another bolt of electricity wakes him and he instantly wishes that he was dead.

His body is healing, which means he can feel it, and he’d really rather not.

He’s still a wolf, paws scrabbling against a broken concrete floor, and he’s still not healed enough to stand, and every movement feels like it’s breaking his spine apart again.

“It’s the wrong fucking wolf,” someone snarls in Russian, and Clint goes very still, panting against the pain, and twitching his ears towards the speaker. He’s so grateful now that Nat made him sit through all those lessons.

“How the fuck were we supposed to know the Soldier got himself a bitch?”

He cracks his eyes open and sees them -- two Hydra agents, bitching. One of them is holding the electric rod which must have been used to wake him. 

“What if he comes after us?” the first one worries, and Clint’s nose twitches at the acrid scent of his fear. “What if --”

“You saw the place,” the second one says. “No one could’ve survived that. Not even the Winter Soldier.”

Bucky did warn him that being able to shift to his wolf didn’t mean he’d have total control when he was emotional, so Clint isn’t entirely surprised when he loses track of time and, when he becomes aware again, he’s crouched in the corner of the room with a body between his paws, snarling and covered in blood.

It’s not his -- it’s the agent that he apparently attacked and nearly tore in half when they’d said that Bucky was dead.

But he’s somehow regained control and he wishes he hadn’t.

There are half a dozen Hydra agents flipping out across the room, all of them are pointing guns at him, and if he’s going to get shot, he’d rather not be aware of it.

Before they can shoot him, though, another one pushes to the front of them and rolls his eyes. “Don’t be hysterical,” he says. “You’ve dealt with fucking feral wolves before.”

And then he shoots Clint with a different sort of gun -- a tranq gun -- and its effects are almost instantaneous. He loses feeling in his paws, his leg. His snarl hesitates and then fades away as he licks his lips and sways a little.

He’s going to pass out and land on the mangled body between his paws. Fuck.

“He’s much prettier than Barnes ever was,” the guy says, and Clint just. That voice is so familiar, but he can’t focus enough to place it. “All that tawny fur. If he’s feral and we can’t get him under control, he’d make a decent rug.”

Clint tries to growl but before he can, his body gives out and he falls.

He lands on the body. At least his fur’s gonna be stained and he won’t be as pretty anymore.

*

These Hydra agents are liberal with the use of electricity and Clint’s gonna have to have a talk with Bucky about just what they did to him when he gets out of here.

Because there’s no fucking way Bucky’s dead.

As it stands, he’s still a wolf, which he’s glad of, because he knows when he shifts back, he’s going to be human and probably naked and that’s a level of vulnerability he’s not quite ready for.

Plus, he also knows he’s terrible for running his mouth under torture and he’d rather not make this any worse than it apparently is.

“He’s still holding his shift,” one of the assholes with the electricity reports, and when he does, he takes a break from electrocuting Clint.

He appreciates it, really, using the break to try to breathe and let the bloody foam drain from his mouth while he pants on the floor, and also to try to figure out why the fuck the lead guy looks so goddamn familiar.

“We’ve nearly got the serum prepared,” the head guy says. “If pain won’t work, we’ll try that.”

Joke’s on them, Clint thinks, and then he’s whining, a high pitched yelp he can’t control as his body spasms, electricity turned back on. Pain is the best way to keep Clint in his wolf shift.

And if they try to give him a serum, he’s going to bite their arms off.

*

They give him the serum. In Clint’s defense, he’s weak, his bones are still knitting back together from the explosion, he’s burned and bruised and they’ve been electrocuting him at various frequencies for who the fuck knows how long, so when they shave a chunk of his fur and thread an IV in his vein, he can’t do much more than growl weakly.

And then his body starts to burn from the inside out.

He doesn’t know how long it takes for his wolfish howls to become human screams but he can only hope that it’s long enough to at least make Natasha proud, because he’s trying his best here, but she was always better at withstanding torture.

At least they aren’t asking questions, because if they were, Clint’s not at all sure he wouldn’t have told them everything they wanted to know.

The burning serum fades away in slow increments, and with every passing second, he becomes more and more aware of his environment.

He’s naked, human, lying face down on a concrete floor with a drain that comes in super handy when they toss a bucket of frigid water over him, probably to wash away the blood, soot, and whatever else he’s got all over him.

The water runs a rusty sort of gray and when it’s gone, the head guy says, amused, “Holy fuck, Barton, is that you?”

He turns his head and it takes far more effort than it should. He blinks, slow and hazy, and his voice is a faint rasp when he says, “Rumlow.”

He should have recognized him. He’s seen him around SHIELD -- and now, he’s wondering if he should maybe have paid a bit more attention when Nat had called him up and said, “SHIELD is compromised, we’re going to look for the Winter Soldier, you in?”

“Thought you died.”

Rumlow’s eyes flash red, the way Bucky’s did -- the way an alpha’s did - and he says, “Hard to kill a wolf, Barton. You should know that by now.”

Clint closes his eyes as the room starts spinning sickly.

“New plan,” Rumlow says to the other agents. “We’re not gonna hurt him anymore. I think we can find another use for him -- after all, he’s just lost his alpha. Poor guy needs a new one.”

Rumlow yanks on Clint’s hair, forcing his head back and ignoring Clint’s weak attempt at a growl. “Open your eyes, Barton,” he says, a hint of something in his tone that had always made Clint shiver when Bucky did it, but with Rumlow, it makes him want to puke.

Even so, his eyes pop open, an instinct to obey that he can’t resist. When Rumlow flashes red eyes at him, Clint can’t help when his flash gold in response.

Rumlow purrs, “Get on your knees for me.”

And Clint is in so much pain, and he’s so tired, and he just wants to die, but Rumlow is an alpha wolf and Clint’s not and his body struggles to obey even as he fights to go for Rumlow’s stupid throat instead.

When he’s on his knees -- trembling and weak and unable to help it - Rumlow turns his touch into a caress and says, “This is going to be so much fun.”

*

It’s not fun.

Rumlow seems to think that Clint’s going to somehow be swayed into swearing fealty to him or whatever the fuck it is werewolves do if he feeds him decent food and doesn’t let the others be too mean to him while his body goes through the painful process of recovering.

It doesn’t take as long as it should because. Well. Werewolf.

And as Clint lays there (on a stained old mattress now, instead of the floor -- Rumlow is spoiling him), for the first time, be begins to think of how fucking useful this werewolf stuff is going to be when he returns to his regularly scheduled program of being a motherfucking Avenger.

Get shot? Heal in a few hours.

Torture? A few hours.

Psychological warfare? Well. Bucky shook it off in 70 years, so.

There is hope is what he’s saying.

He knows two things with absolute certainty. The first is that there’s no way Bucky is dead. He’s survived so many worse things than being blown up. The second is that Rumlow will be Clint’s alpha when hell fucking freezes over.

Rumlow’s got a collar around Clint’s neck, he’d said some shit about it being electric, meant to train him, added some shit about getting the chair ready for recalibration. He’d petted Clint’s hair and told him that if he did what he was told, it wouldn’t hurt.

Clint’s never done what he was told. 

Fuckers.

So he breathes through his body recovering, regenerating. He wishes he had some pants. He wishes he was back at the cottage with Bucky, eating pancakes and making stupid jokes about lube.

He remembers that the cottage is gone now and the rage threatens to suck him right into feral wolf mode, which’ll probably throw off his healing, so he breathes and closes his eyes and pictures a path in the woods, with sun dappling through the leaves. He smells the fresh soil, the growth, the rabbits hiding in the underbrush. He walks along the path, looking for his safe place, and when he finds it, it’s Bucky’s cottage, perfect and waiting the way it should’ve always been.

He imagines he hears the rhythmic chopping of firewood and imagines he’s walking around to the front, where Bucky would be -- he wonders if he’s shirtless, he wonders if he’s wearing that ridiculous sweater, he wonders if he’s mouthy enough, will Bucky shove him up against the trunk of a tree and shove his hands down his pants.

And then he remembers that the cottage is gone. The firewood Bucky spent so long chopping is gone.

Bucky could be gone.

His eyes open, burning gold, and he decides, _enough_.

He’s recovered enough.

*

The first mistake Rumlow made was declaring that Bucky was dead.

The second was thinking Clint would ever be fucking obedient just because he flashed a pair of red eyes at him.

The third was thinking that coming to get Clint for his session with the fucking recalibration chair _alone_ was going to work out for him.

Clint’s in wolf form and waiting when Rumlow opens the door, and he’s got Rumlow on the ground, throat between his jaws, before Rumlow’s got time to scream or push the button to activate the collar around his neck.

“Wait,” Rumlow says, human hands shoving roughly at Clint’s chest. “Wait, you can’t -- Barton. _Let me go_.”

He says it with that same insistence, that same alpha undertone, but Clint’s ready for it this time, and he fights against it, disobeying it the way he’s disobeyed every authority figure in his life, and when his teeth tear through Rumlow’s throat, Rumlow’s still trying to issue orders.

He dies fast.

Clint kind of wishes he could have made it take longer, but desperate times and all that.

He drags the body into the far corner of the room, leaving a streak of clotting blood on the floor, and licks at the blood on his lips and his paws, snarling softly and pacing the room. He’s barely holding onto his control here, but he knows letting the wolf take over now -- while he’s collared and chained in a fucking Hydra base that doesn’t have much in the way of flight or fight options -- is a terrible idea.

He’s pretty sure wolves will chew their own legs off to escape a trap, and he might be terrible at making escape plans as a human, but whatever he comes up with has gotta be better than that.

The other Hydra operatives seem too frightened to try to come into the room, which is nice. Rumlow’s got the only control for the collar on him, and Clint paws through his pockets until he finds it, crunching it between his teeth.

He can hear them talking out in the hall, with various degrees of hysteria in their voices. They’re trying to decide if they should write him off and toss some poisonous gas into the room to take care of him -- apparently the ventilation system is a problem -- or simply lock him inside and hope weakness and starvation make him easier to control and get the chair.

Eventually, they decide to lock him in and wait for orders.

Clint paces some more and then curls up in the corner opposite the body and shivers.

He wants to go home.

He wants Bucky.

He wants to be able to forget the sight of their home, blown to pieces.

But mostly, he wants Bucky.

*

Shouting wakes him, seconds before the door to his room is thrown open.

“He’s in there,” someone says, terse. “You’ve got two minutes.”

And then, as suddenly as he was gone before, Bucky’s there. He looks better than he should -- no burns, no soot, no broken parts, and Clint -- who’s somehow shaken off his wolf in his sleep -- gets shakily to his feet and wonders if this is a dream.

He’s sticky with Rumlow’s dried blood, though, and he’s pretty sure if this was a dream, he’d at least have had a shower.

“Bucky,” he says, and his voice is a mess from screaming. He wonders why the werewolf healing hadn’t fixed that by now.

Bucky’s there in an instant, grabbing him by the arms when he stumbles like he’s going to fall, running his eyes critically over him from his toes straight up to the tip of his nose, cataloguing the blood.

“I’ve got you,” he says, and there is so much tension around his mouth, so much darkness in his eyes, Clint just wants to take him and drag him out of here and not stop running until he gets back to his farm in Iowa where they can finally fucking be safe. His eyes linger on the collar, on the healing burns there. “You’re okay?”

Clint swallows back nausea and says, “They said you were dead.”

“Takes more than that to kill me,” Bucky says. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“But what are you doing here?”

“I told you,” Bucky says. His voice is urgent and off-centre in a way Clint’s never heard. “They get you, they have me.”

“But --”

“I promised not to kill them if they let you go.”

Stunned, Clint just stares at him. There are so many things he needs to say to tell Bucky just how fucking not okay that is, but before he can, Bucky notices the body in the corner.

“You killed Agent X,” he says, eyes narrow. “What did he --”

“Fucking _Rumlow_ ,” Clint snarls. “Said you were dead and he’d be my new alpha but I’m shit at taking orders, Bucky, just like you said.”

Bucky looks back at him, eyes blazing red, and says, low and rough, “He thought he could take you from me?”

“He said -- he was going to --” Clint starts to shake -- he’s been running on adrenaline and fear and fury for so many hours, and now Bucky is here and he’s just. It’s too much. 

Bucky slides his hands up, until he’s cradling the back of Clint’s neck, and says very deliberately, “I’m glad you killed him. But if you hadn’t, I’d have torn him apart, slowly, for thinking he had any right to put his hands on you.”

He presses a quick, hard kiss to Clint’s mouth, not even caring about the dried blood there, and says, more quietly, “I need you to listen to me, and I need you to actually do what I say this time. Okay? When they come for you, you go with them. You do what they say. They’re going to get you out of here.”

“But I can’t just leave --”

“I’m going to be fine,” Bucky tells him, looking stern and serious and not letting Clint turn his head to look away. “You need to trust me. They won’t have me for long. But they don’t get to spend another second hurting you. Do you understand?”

“They’ll hurt you, though,” Clint says shakily. “I can’t leave you here alone-”

Bucky rests his forehead against Clint’s and then says, quiet and intense, “The thing about Stark tech is that it survives explosions that’ll destroy everything else. He makes pretty strong phones, Clint. I’m not here alone. Okay?”

“Nat--”

“Shh. They’re coming back. Just -- just do what they say, and when you get out of here, run. I’ll find you.”

“Bucky --”

“I promise.”

The door opens and an angry Hydra agent is there, impatient and snapping and Bucky shoves Clint at him before he has a chance to say anything he needs to say. In the movies, there’s always more time than this, time to figure out how to get his tongue to wrap around the words he needs to say to let Bucky know just how important it is that he keep his promise because Clint has goddamn feelings that he doesn’t know what to do with and he can’t imagine having to figure that out without Bucky there to help him.

Instead, he trips over his own feet on the way out the door, the Hydra goon jerks him up by his arm, and he’s dragged out of the room, door slamming shut behind him.

He’s still got the shakes, still not quite healed enough for walking or navigating or finding his way through the labyrinth of hallways, can’t quite figure out how to leave a trail for Bucky to follow.

Clint’s naked and covered in Rumlow’s dried blood, it’s not like he’s got any crumbs to leave.

The sunlight is blinding when the Hydra agent shoves the door open, and before Clint’s eyes can adjust, he’s pushed forward so violently, he trips, catching himself on his hands and knees.

And then the agent sneers, “The Winter Soldier’s lost his damn mind if he thinks we’re just gonna let an Avenger walk out of here and tell the others where to find us.”

And then he shoots Clint in the back of the head and everything goes instantly, blissfully, black.

*

Bucky’s chest is vibrating with a low, feral growl and Clint can feel it echoing in his bones, throbbing in the intense, perception-altering pain in his head.

He can’t move. He can’t see. He wouldn’t be sure he exists at all if it wasn’t for that vibration, that soft, warning growl, and the pain.

And slowly, little bits of his senses come dripping back. He starts to see a hazy, distant light. He starts to feel a tight, constricting pain around his body. He starts to taste blood on his tongue. He becomes aware of voices, far away and pleading.

His vision is sorting itself into faint shapes, different colours and shadows, when he can move, just a little, and he opens his mouth to speak.

It comes out as a wordless moan and the growing changes, ramping up in intensity, and he’s jostled, which causes a flash of pain to ricochet through his entire body, abruptly making him aware of every broken, bruised piece of himself.

His moan becomes a high-pitched whine.

“I know it’s hard,” someone says, as Clint’s brain finally gets its shit together enough to turn sounds into syllables. “But I need you to let me have him.”

“We don’t have _time_ for this. Just shoot him! He’ll heal.” He recognizes the voice but not the cadence, which is too off-balance, too emotional to be quite familiar.

The first speaker stays calm, measured. “Just let us make sure he’s okay, Bucky. We’ve got a doctor waiting to see him and --”

Bucky. It lights up his damaged brain like a Christmas tree, illuminating the darker, shadowy parts that are still struggling to knit back together, to reform neural pathways that were broken.

Bucky. Bucky needs him. Bucky’s in danger.

Clint blinks at the fog of light and shapes and tries to make sense of what’s happening.

And then the woman speaks again, desperate. “Steve,” she says, and the growl changes, becomes a high, desperate whine.

“Nat,” Clint says, staring at the shape that could be her. Even as he blinks at her, her lines and edges begin to focus.

“Jesus, Clint,” she says, and it sounds like she’s about to cry. “You need to tell Bucky to let you go. We can’t help you unless he lets us near you. Please, Clint.”

Clint turns his head a little to focus on the shape beside her and fuck, it’s Steve. Clint’s memories are messed up, everything is upside down and backwards, but if Steve is here, Bucky’s gotta be freaking out.

He turns his head towards the source of the constricting pressure, and moving sends white hot daggers of pain through his eyes and into his brain.

But he recognizes Bucky’s wolf form -- eyes blazing red, lips curled back in warning, curled around Clint and snarling at anyone who tries to get close.

He’s feral and Clint doesn’t see Bucky in the wolf’s eyes at all, but it doesn’t matter. Bucky wouldn’t ever hurt him.

He reaches up with a clumsy hand, stroking at Bucky’s head, between his ears, and Bucky looks away from Natasha and Steve to focus on him with a soft whine, licking at his face which is sticky with blood. Probably his own.

“Bucky, hey,” Clint says, his voice weak and raspy. “Bucky. ‘Member when you said I’d eat Nat when I saw her again and then I didn’t? Been thinking ‘bout that. ‘Cause Nat is my pack and she’s always been mine and Steve’s always been yours, so’s why you couldn’t kill him.” His eyes close, exhausted, but he still manages to whisper, “So you gotta trust, Bucky. S’what pack does. Remember?”

He’s not sure all of what happens next or how long it takes, but the next thing he knows, Natasha’s got him by the shoulders and she’s snapping, “I’m going to kill you, Barton,” which is how he knows she cares. “Get the med-evac, now.”

There’s all sorts of commotion and Clint reaches out blindly for Bucky because he knows Bucky’s gotta be close and probably freaking the fuck out because Steve is here and Natasha is here and there’s probably a quinjet coming and Bucky, Clint’s pretty sure, had intended to spend the rest of his life in that tiny cottage in the woods.

Bucky’s there, licking at his hand and close enough to touch, and Clint buries his hand in the thick fur at the back of his neck so that when they take him away on the jet, they’ll have no choice but to take Bucky too.

And Bucky’ll have no choice but to come.

They can sort out the rest in New York, or wherever they end up.

Clint’s even willing to talk about feelings to make it happen.

*

Clint wakes up in a bedroom he recognizes, to the very familiar sound of someone chopping wood nearby. For a sweet minute, he thinks that it was all a dream -- he’s back in the cottage and the blood and pain and fear was all a nightmare that’s already begun to fade.

But then he turns his head and realizes he’s in the bedroom of his farmhouse in Iowa and someone’s turned it into a goddamn hospital room, and the illusion is shattered.

“Thought bringing a couple freaked out werewolves to New York would be a bad idea,” Natasha says, quiet, and Clint manages to turn his head a little farther to find her sitting in his armchair near the window, watching him.

It’s so similar to nearly every other time he’d gotten badly hurt on a mission, he can’t help but smile. “Here to keep me still until the docs release me?” he asks her.

“No doctors here. A medic checked you out and started babbling about taking tissue samples and running tests on your cells, so we sent her off to Stark to get her sorted out with his team of lawyers and non-disclosure forms. You were nearly healed by then anyway.”

“So’m good?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes. “This werewolf thing means you can’t yell at me for getting hurt anymore?”

Her eyes narrow dangerously. “I can yell at you for getting shot by Hydra and bitten by a goddamn werewolf,” she says, voice low and furious. “I can yell at you for telling me to stay away without telling me what was happening. I can yell at you for not reporting that you’d found the Winter Soldier. I can yell at you for allowing yourself to be compromised. I can definitely yell at you for getting blown up, for getting taken by Hydra, for getting tortured and for fucking getting shot.”

“Fair,” Clint says, after a moment. And then he smiles, just a little, and says, “I did get compromised, didn’t I? Twice.”

Natasha starts to growl and it makes the wolfy part of Clint want to roll over and show submission. He manfully ignores it and asks, nervous, “Where is he?”

“Bucky’s out back,” she says. “Chopping wood. With Steve. Probably talking about things they’d have talked about weeks ago if you’d reported that you’d found Bucky when you were supposed to.”

“Is Steve mad?”

“At you? Or Bucky?” She rolls her eyes. “He was, when I first called him, but he’s working on being understanding. It was tough to convince him that the giant black wolf that wouldn’t let us near you was actually Bucky, but after you woke up and told him we were family--”

“Pack,” Clint says sleepily.

Her voice goes softer. “Pack,” she agrees. “After that, he was alright. He and Bucky are working things out.”

Clint closes his eyes, relaxing. Bucky and Steve will figure things out. They’re pack. They have to.

He can’t hear the axe anymore, he’s pretty sure Bucky heard him wake up and is waiting anxiously downstairs for the chance to come up here and hover, but maybe he’s too afraid of Natasha to interrupt.

Most people would be.

“S’good that he was chopping wood,” he mumbles. “It’s like meditation for him. D’you know I started meditating? I’m shit at it.”

“Clint,” she says, exasperated. “We need to talk.”

“After sleeping,” he says, syllables blending together with exhaustion. “I need Bucky. I need --”

The door flies open and Clint doesn’t even have to open his eyes to know it’s Bucky. He just reaches a hand out for him and Natasha sighs before pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“We are going to talk about this,” she tells him.

He hums in agreement and then she’s gone and Bucky is sliding into bed with him, cuddling him close.

“I’m gonna kill you,” Bucky says, soft and sweet.

“Tasha said the same thing,” Clint mumbles, and then he’s sleeping again, safe and warm and barely in any pain.

*

Clint jerks awake when there’s a sudden impact on the bed, shaking him. He startles, sitting up with a strangled yet, nightmares of Hydra and electricity lingering.

And then he realizes that it’s Lucky, vibrating with happiness and trying to lick his face and wholly unconcerned that there’s an angry alpha werewolf grumbling, “Calm the fuck down, mutt, you’re going to hurt him.”

Clint beams. “I knew Lucky would like you,” he says. “Dogs aren’t prey, they’re totally pack, I _knew_ it.”

Bucky’s still grumbling. It’s dark out, probably the middle of the night, and Clint does his best to get Lucky settled, until he’s curled up in bed with Bucky against his back and Lucky against his chest and he feels contentment sink deeply into his bones.

“You need to rest,” Bucky tells him.

“I did rest,” Clint says. “I’m all done resting.”

“It’s the middle of the fucking night and you got shot in the head.”

Clint rolls over carefully to face him, biting his bottom lip and studying Bucky’s face in the moonlight. “I’m real sorry about that.”

“We had a plan,” Bucky says, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’d take your place and you’d get as far away as you could and Natalia would call Steve for fucking back up and they’d help me take the entire place apart.”

“That’s a terrible plan,” Clint says, earnest. “You can’t blame me for ruining the plan. That’s a Steve Rogers level of stupid plan.”

“I heard them shoot you and I just -- by the time Steve got there, they were all torn to pieces. And I had you. And I just. I couldn’t. I couldn’t let anyone near you. You were barely alive, and I just. Couldn’t do it. I haven’t lost control in over 50 years, but seeing you like that--”

“I know,” Clint says soothingly, running a hand up his arm to his neck. “I’m sorry. I’m okay now. You kept me safe.”

“You got shot because of me,” Bucky says, shaking his head. “You got _bit_ because of --”

He’s gonna have to do it. Clint’s gonna have to talk about feelings. It’s his only option.

He takes a deep breath and says, “I’m real sorry your cottage got blown up but I’m not sorry I was there. I’m really gonna miss it. Because being with you, there, for however long I got to be there -- those were the best days of my whole life. And it’s not because I’m a werewolf with super healing and super hearing and whatever the fuck else. It’s because of you. Because you make me laugh. And you make me happy.”

“Clint,” Bucky says, soft and painfully fond.

Clint just barrels on. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do. I’ll meditate for you. I’ll learn how to cook fucking pie for you. I’ll do whatever lessons you need me to do to make sure I’m safe to be around people before we ever try to be around people, except for Natasha and probably Steve, because he loves you and misses you like crazy and I’m not stupid enough to think you guys aren’t a package deal. What I’m trying to say --” He screws up his face and his courage and then finishes, “-- is that I like you. A whole lot. Like, more than a lot. I probably more than like you, but I’m not ready to talk about that, but if you need me to say it, I will --”

Bucky kisses him, sweet and sleepy, and then says, “I love you too but maybe we can wait and talk about feelings in the morning.”

Clint stares at him, blinking slowly, because here he is, ready to do it, ready to commit, to talk about feelings, to _admit to fucking feelings_ , and Bucky is, what. Too tired to listen?

“You’re an asshole,” he says, but he’s laughing, and Bucky just drags him close and presses a sleepy kiss to his temple.

“Sleep,” Bucky says, like it’s an order. “You’re working on obedience, remember?”

Clint huffs and snuggles up against him and decides to obey.

The way he’s feeling, he’s pretty sure he’s gonna want to be shouting about his feelings from rooftops before too long anyway. 

So he can wait ‘til morning.

After Bucky makes him a goddamn cup of coffee.

The End.


End file.
